The Eric Metaxas Show - Saurabh Sharma

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

President of American Moment and co-host of Moment of Truth, Saurabh Sharma talks about the future of the conservative party and the hopeful return of Donald Trump to the White House

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blob, starring Steve McQueen? The Blood Crudling Prep of The Blob. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because the blob was supposed to eat them. But he kept spitting him up. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster.

Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest. Eric the Texas. Folks, welcome back. A few things to cover. Kind of exciting. First of all, it's all exciting. I don't know where to start. I'll start here.

John West of the Discovery Institute. I interviewed him for Socrates in the city. Oh, it's a few months ago. He's a C.S. Lewis expert. And I've known him of him for years, just only have met him a few times. But I may have mentioned this. But I was astounded the other day to see that he had written an article. Today, May 15th, it is at the stream.

So go to stream. dot org. In the article, he talks about my new book, Religinalist Christianity and about letter to the American Church. And he compares me and what I've written to Francis Schaefer. Francis Schaefer is such a legend and such an icon that to be compared to him can only make you look like a gnat. But it is as humbling and embarrassing as it is, it's clearly flattering. And so I feel very touched that he would write this long article. It's a long. article. What's at stream is a much shorter version. So you can go to stream.org. But what he's talking about is it's kind of at the center of my life these last years where you, you know, you kind of trade in

your respectability with certain people for speaking the truth because you feel you don't have a choice. And that's really where I have come in the last years. I feel that a lot of the, we can call them elites, particularly the evangelical elites, have ignored where we are and they have taken the safe path. Obviously, my writing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer shows that I believe that each of us has a duty not to take the safe path, but to do the right thing by God. And that's what I've tried to do. But it comes with a price. I rarely talk about the price, but it comes with a real price, losing friends, losing, you know, whatever it is. It's, that's not the fun part. But in any event, it happened to Francis Schaefer. It happened to one of the greatest

human beings of the 20th or any other century, Alexander Solzniots. And you say stuff to the elites that the elites don't want to hear. And, you know, you pay a price. So it's at stream.org today. And again, I hope you'll go there, folks. Speaking of Socrates in the city, tomorrow, literally tomorrow, the 16th, Thursday, 16th of May, tomorrow, we have a Socrates in the city in New York City. If you can get there, you've got to go. I promise you, it's great. It's great. We have Ron White, one of the great biographers of this generation. I'll be interviewing him about his Lincoln biography, his Ulysses grant biography and his brand new biography about Joshua Chamberlain. I'm reading that book right now.

You talk about a war hero and a hero, a hero, a real hero, a real hero. Joshua Chamberlain, last night I was reading it. It's so moving what people sacrifice for their country, for what is right, for what is true. my goodness. Anyway, if you want to watch it live, you have to be signed up at Socrates Plus. Go to Socrates in the city.com. Sign up for Socrates plus. It's like five bucks a month. So you can sign up. And if you hate it, you spend $5. So it's, that's tomorrow. We're doing a Socrates in Oxford. And that is really exciting. We have, I guess. And it is sort of Francis Schaeferry, you know. Actually, yeah, it's Francis Schaefery,

ugliest adjective in the history of the world. Francis Schaeferi. It's Francis Schaeferi. That's going to become a word. You've just coined a word. A neologism, Chris, a neologism. I just coined the term neologism. If you want to know where that comes from, I just coined it.

I just coined the verb to coin. I just did that right now in case anybody wants to know. You can say these things because, you know, people aren't going to look it up. It's original with me, folks. The verb to coin, neologism, also original with me. Okay. So before we continue, we want to remind you of our friends at CSI. I just want to encourage anybody who's listening to go to metaxishtashtalk.com to click on the banner

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I'll give you the phone number in a few minutes before we move on with the program. Actually, I'll give you the phone number now. It's 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. I'll mention it at the end of the segment. I also want to remind you we have friends at the Herzog Foundation. These are heroes, folks. These are heroes.

What they're doing, they are encouraging. parents, okay, to get their kids the best education they can, either in a classical Christian school or homeschooling, they help you do it. They help you. If you're saying, I don't know, I don't think I could do this. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And the Herzog Foundation will make it very simple for you to do this, to figure out what's best for your kids. Go to Herzogfoundation.com. really, this is a movement. And the Herzog Foundation, they're at the forefront of this movement. So I'm thrilled that they're partnering with us on this program,

Herdsog Foundation.com. Everywhere I go, I meet homeschoolers and I go, you know what? They are the future of this country. If we have a future, which I think we will, but this is the investment we're making. I also want to remind you of our friends at the Alliance, sorry, Americans for Prosperity, wherever we mention Americans for, For Prosperity. We mentioned that they've got the website,

Bidenomics.com. You've got to check it out. I just find it hilarious that Americans for Prosperity has bought the website, Bidenomics.com. So on the website, they talk about what the Biden administration has claimed, usually bold lies. And then they talk about the economic realities.

So they've got a tour going on called Prosperity is possible this summer. They're really just speaking truth. about the economy and where we are and the reality. And then they're looking for common sense solutions, which pretty much everybody but the Biden administration is also looking for. So check it out. Okay, if you haven't called the number. You can go to metaxis talk.com for CSI or call 888-253-3522.

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You're going to love this free new tool they've added. LegacyPm Investments.com. Legacy pminvestments.com. and check it out. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. We have on the program today a new guest, a very young guest, at least I consider him very young. His name is Sarab Sharma. He's president of American Moment, co-host of Moment of Truth. He's former chairman of young conservatives of Texas. And the subject of an article in Politico called the Brash Group of Young Conservatives, getting ready for the next Trump administration.

Sarab, welcome. Thank you for having me, Eric. I'm always curious how people get to be who they are, right? So what you're doing right now, what was your path here? Did you know before college, in college, when did you become conservative? It's encouraging to me that somebody who's only, what are you, 25? 26. You're 26, so you're pretty much over the hill.

So seriously, though, how did you get to be, you know, at your young age, knowing what you want to do, what you believe in? What's your story before we get into the details? Absolutely, Eric. Well, I'm an immigrant to the United States. I moved here when I was three months old and I've gotten to see a lot of the country. And so I just got to see a lot of how different people in the United States live along the American South and the West Coast and then moved back to India, actually, for my eighth, ninth, and 10th grade. And that contrast was really important because you grew up in kind of sheltered middle class suburbs your entire life. I was a math and science nerd.

You think you understand the world. And then you see what it's like to live in a country that's still figuring things out, figuring out the rule of law, figuring out the institutions that America relies on so heavily to be the most prosperous country in the world. So that was probably the seed. And then the water that fed that seed was the 2016 election. I was a freshman in college. I had gone and decided to do some summer classes. all my friends were gone for the summer. And so I spent a lot of time watching content related to the election.

I was watching Trump speeches and Bernie Sanders speeches and Hillary Clinton speeches and really just fell in love with politics. And so chose to get very involved at the state level first in Texas where I realized that the state capital there that people you'll never vote for, you'll never give a dime to you'll never see on television actually control everything, these staff behind the scenes. And that eventually led to the ideas that created the organization I now run. American moment. Well, it's fascinating. I mean, I'm the son of immigrants and it strikes me that anyone who either comes from another country or is, you know, the child of folks who've come from another country has a grip on reality that most Americans cannot have because you sort of think that this world we live in here in America as normal. You don't have anything to compare it to. and it's difficult to appreciate what we have here.

And so it's interesting to me that you, at a crucial years, lived in India. My goodness, the contrast, you know, again, it is extraordinary. How did you, I mean, when you were processing the 2016 election as a young man, it's hard for me to believe that this is now eight years ago. It's just astonishing. So you said you were a freshman.

in college? Yes. And were you at UT Austin? I was. Okay. So Austin's pretty liberal, obviously. And you began to kind of connect the dots at that point. Had you, would you have thought of yourself as conservative before that? You know, I definitely was was pretty traditional in my outlook. It's how my parents raised me. It's the kind of outlook I was raised with. But I don't think I would have ever felt comfortable identifying as a Republican. Frankly, I don't know if I still feel comfortable identifying as a Republican because boy, is it definitely the useless party in Washington. But it definitely sort of aligned things and made everything make more sense in the context of the big political battles the countries facing. Trump was just so much more interesting than anything

that had come before. I don't know if we had had a conventional Republican primary in 2016, whether politics would have captured my attention in the same way. I probably would have gone and stayed with a STEM route, become a doctor, and never really engaged the political process. But he sort of threw open the Overton window of what was possible. And it just became clear that this was not only an interesting world. It was not only a world where there were a ton of opportunities, but that we were in the middle of this seismic generational shift in politics where the old guard was getting thrown out on the street and new challengers were going to have an opportunity to make their mark.

And that's, you know, President Trump's the leading edge of that. But there needs to be an entire generation of people that help cement and extend his legacy long beyond just the terms that he'll be in office. And in the same way that President Ronald Reagan, people think President Reagan died in the 90s when he did. But I really believe that he's functionally immortal because of all the people who have chosen to advance his legacy in public policy and in political life.

And President Trump has had some challenges having that same process occur because so much of elite opinion in the Republican Party was structurally opposed to him well throughout his presidency and even to this day. But it's going to happen one way or another because his agenda and his vision for politics is true. It's true. Correct. Correct. I don't even have to ask the question and you got it right. So your organization is called The American Moment. Yes. And it's interesting. I mean, you just said so much that is important.

this idea that the Republican Party is changing dramatically. I mean, it's almost like when we think about the Reagan Revolution. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the Reagan Revolution. And the Reagan Revolution really was significant. I mean, the idea that he cut taxes so dramatically that he was willing to be a strong leader to have a strong America. You know, these things, it was a big deal. But it really led to a world of what we now call rhinos, that the establishment Republican Party,

you know, by the time you get to 2016, you just said it. I mean, imagine in 2016, if Trump doesn't exist, imagine Jeb Bush being the frontrunner, what a different world we would be in. And again, I don't know about you, but I realized that I hadn't yet awakened to where we were. I would have been very happy. Oh, Jeb Bush, yeah, he's great. He's not Obama. He's not Biden. He's not Hillary.

Great. Jeb Bush. Awesome. Trump inadvertently, it seems to me, mostly inadvertently, revealed the corruption, the stasis, the complacency within the establishment. Republican Party and caused an earthquake in American politics. We are now in a new world. We're still fighting the battle, but it seems clear to me that the MAGA movement, as it is now

called, has taken control. The idea that Trump is, is the frontrunner like crazy. I mean, he's so far ahead of anybody else who had put their hats in the ring. It's a monumental moment. but we're still fighting, and I know you are fighting forces within the party who are, they're the deep state, they're the Uniparty, they are the status quo effectively. They're the status quo. And they have led us to where we are now. You and many others are, I have to say, signs of tremendous encouragement to me. I'm encouraged by J.D. Vance, whom I got to know a couple of years ago, is he someone that helped you,

informing the American moment? Absolutely. It was actually an article that he wrote in April of 2020 that gave us the idea for the organization. He was a founding board member. He's a good friend. And, you know, in many ways, if, you know, President Trump is definitely the, you know, progenitor of this movement in the United States, I think world affairs basically hinged on the election of President Trump and Brexit in 2016. But J.D. Vance is really, you know, very close behind as an avatar for what a lot of the people that we work with in politics see as the future, the, the person extending and defining what the Trump legacy is going to be and a real champion

in the Senate in very short order. I think people don't appreciate that enough. The culture of the Senate is that you keep your mouth shut and you be quiet and you do whatever leadership says for the first year or two or three that you're in there. JD was instantaneously extremely not only effective in the Senate, but also effective for the right values, fighting against this endless war consensus, fighting hard on immigration, fighting hard for our economic security, not just whatever the biggest corporations in America want. So it's really been a joy to see him go from when I first got to know him, Citizen Vance to now Senator Vance. Yeah, no, it's very, very exciting. I had him on this program. It's got to be well over a year ago now. But when I

realized he's the real thing. And part of the story of J.D. Vance is it's because anybody familiar with his book, Hillbilly elegy, he comes from that part of the country spat upon by the cultural Beltway elites. He comes from a part of the country, you know, the working class, in many cases, broken families of, you know, the part of the world where fentanyl has destroyed families and lives. He comes from that world and speaks for those people. Just as Trump has spoken to those people, but Trump doesn't come from that world.

But J.D. Vance does come from that world. So he's just a very bright light. Folks, we'll be right back. What is the website? Is it the AmericanMomoment.com? AmericanMomoments.org. We'll be right back with Sarab Sharma. American Moment.org.

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Use the code Eric for 15% off. Again, Nutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-D-I-X. Newtrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Welcome back, talking to Sorab Sharma, who's the head of the American moment. So you just mentioned off the air the idea that, you know, we talk about it as the MAGA movement in America. And at the heart of it really is a healthy view of nationalism, a healthy view that nation states, we ought to have sovereignty. We ought to govern ourselves. We don't want to be governed by the globalists whom we never elected, who are the enemies, effectively, of American, of the vision of liberty of the American founders.

And that's where we are right now. And so many of the Republican rhinos, they are, they're in bed with the elites, the globalists. They're really at war with we the people in America. but this is something that's going on all around the world. So talk about that because you just mentioned that you were at a conference in Brussels. How is it framed? I mean, if we talk about it as the MAGA movement in America, how is it framed internationally? It's a very good question.

You know, I don't think I can do it much better than the economist did a few months ago when they ran a cover story on this worldview, national conservatism, this movement. And it was this red hat and it said make. And then it was a list of countries, America, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, El Salvador, Italy, great again. And it's, you know, it's a tall hat because you got to fit a lot on there. That's really the movement. What we're facing in the United States where you have this out of touch globalist elite in both parties left and right, you know, seeking to extract value, dignity, and heritage from the people that they're supposed to be looking out for, that is not a unique battle. That is a battle that every Western nation is facing, even non-Western nation. nations, there is this extreme tension because especially for left and centrist and even center

right elites across the world, the temptation of global government of, you know, this unity in international institutions and glitzy capitals and Brussels and London and New York was very tempting for the last 40 years. And the concerns back home, the concern of ordinary people, religious people, small business owners, they seemed very parochial, very uninteresting, very low prestige. And so those elites managed to gain extreme market share of power in every country where they took control and have proceeded to do a very similar thing to every nation where they've taken control. They import left-wing cultural values to people who have no interest in adopting them. They adopt a globalist view of economics that, you know, as Tucker Carlson says, aims to make the world safe

for banking, but not much for, you know, ordinary people. You know, they, They're certainly very interested in, you know, extractive foreign policy in Europe and the United States. It's very similar world view. And then, of course, immigration, the importation, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people from the second and third world into Western countries that simply don't have the ability to accommodate it. And so what started with Brexit, you know, continued with the election of President Donald Trump and has included these nationalist populist revolutions in all sorts of European countries. and elsewhere is the response to that elite control of public life. And there's all sorts of interesting examples of this. Naib Buckele, you know, making El Salvador have a lower crime rate than Canada.

Narendra Modi fighting back against liberal internationalists in his country in India. Bibi Nat and Yahoo fighting against the secular left in his country. Victor Orban in Hungary, Donald Trump in the United States. These are very similar figures in a lot of ways, each finding creative, disruptive answers to the big challenges facing their countries. They're all patriots. But I think you're also starting to see something interesting. They like each other. They talk to each other and they're working together. And that's extremely important because if the right is atomized across the world, the globalist unified left will beat it every time. We need a nationalist

international to unify to find common cause, common tactics and learn from each other in order to push back against them. At the end of the day, what we're talking about is a culturally elite colonialism. That's really what this is. Globalism is colonialism. They want to impose values on people. And those values are always, I'm speaking as a Christian, they're anti-biblical, anti-Christian, they're dramatically socially liberal. And people in these countries, as you say, are not interested in it. But typically, you know, they are, told, well, if you want this aid, you have to have, you know, you have to liberalize your policies on abortion, on down the line, on trans rights, whatever madness they're pushing. But it's so

interesting to me, because it is colonialism. They are, they're elites. They have power. And they're pushing these ideas on people that in many cases are only now waking up to the threat. I think of, you know, my family's from Greece, and I think about what happened to Greece when they signed on with the European Union. It's extraordinary. In a sense, they have been attacked. The idea of Greece as Greece has been attacked. I mean, innumerable immigrants have come there who don't share their values. I mean, it's happening all over the world. And I guess because it's so bad, people, are, people are waking up. What countries right now do you see are really in the fight?

You mentioned a few. Yeah, I think that there's, you know, in Europe, Hungary is definitely the crown jewel of the conservative movement there. They've really taken a almost fatherly approach to nurturing the entire conservative movement in Europe. They're doing conferences and events and opening centers in every country they can find. But they, but they by no means want to run it. they just want to nurture and see this movement grow.

And so you're seeing green shoots in Spain, in France, in Italy. I think the verdict is still to be determined whether Georgia Maloney is going to end up being, you know, a good or bad influence on Italy. But you're seeing real green shoots all across Europe. You know, Israel, obviously, in the Middle East, is an example of a country that has been extremely prosperous and effective. Forgive me, we're going to go to a break, folks. We'll be right back talking to Sarab Sharma, American Moment.

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We're talking to Sarabsharmah, AmericanMemot.org, is the website. I want to ask you, you just mentioned about, is it Maloney in Italy, that we weren't sure whether she was going to be a good. What is going on there? Because, you know, when she first came on the scene, I didn't see anything but positives. Has there been more of a struggle more recently? Yeah, I think that people were very excited when Georgia Maloney took power because This is Italy. This is a G7 country. It's a country that matters historically, geopolitically, economically. It has a real economy. And so to see a unabashed, center-right, populist, nationalist

figure get elected was very exciting. Now, unfortunately, the results have been a little bit mixed since she took power. She hasn't gotten a handle on migration. And there's a whole number of other issues where a lot of conservatives feel betrayed. Now, I'm probably somewhere in the middle on it. I think that the jury is still out. Is she playing some sort of a long game? We have to realize about Italy is that having united government for anything longer than like three weeks is not exactly in its cultural heritage. It's had like 100 governments in 60 years or something crazy like that. I'm probably getting the number slightly off. But it is very, very hard to keep a political coalition together in Italy. And look, the EU does not mess around. Germany and France, they're the twin

pillars of the EU. And you mentioned that your family's from Greece, they've shown what they're willing to do to countries in the EU that do not obey. Hungary is dealing with that right now. And so it's entirely possible that she's playing a long game where she's trying to build a kind of durable power and influence so that they can actually take interesting steps on immigration and on other issues. So the jury is still out. I do think, you know, nationalists and conservatives should never be a cheap date. They should never just settle for someone who says the right things.

We should always look to leaders who are actually doing the right things. By the way, thank you for not mentioning Speaker Johnson by name. Please. That's right. You know, it feels like people are entirely satisfied to just, you know, if a political leader says, you know, men are men and women are women. And the other side is bad that that's all conservatives want. I personally have higher standards.

Well, it's an interesting thing. I'm so disgusted with Speaker Johnson that I know a couple of days ago he was talking about appearing in court to show solidarity with Trump. And I have to say, I don't know that I would, if I were Donald Trump, if I would want someone like, that would be like Mitch McConnell showing up to me at this point. It's like, I need you to do more before you, you know, I want you to be allied with me in the public mind. I guess I want to talk about, you know, the idea, the promise of a Trump second term.

First of all, we have to be honest about the fact that the left does not believe in principles, does not believe in being honest and fair elections. It's very clear to me they stole the last election. We need to be clear about this, that this is a wicked thing and that they are, they don't need to poll well if they know how to cheat. if they know how to game the system. Let's assume Donald Trump is elected in November. First of all, we have to assume that the left is not going to concede.

They're not going to say, oh, okay, it was fair. We lost. Big Lee. Okay, so we'll give you four years. I don't see that happening. What do you see them doing in November? As President Trump says, it's going to make your head spin. I think that it's going to be an extremely, extremely difficult administration from basically the moment the polls close.

Look, the polls look really good right now. I'm a little bit skeptical. I don't think that, you know, we live in a country where political landslides are going to be all that common anymore. Every election is tightly contested, extremely competitive. Both sides are very eager to win. And so the victory, if President Trump gets one, is going to be razor thin. that's instantly going to be contested via lawfare. And so we need to make sure we have our ducks in a row when it comes to being able to meet

Democratic lawfare toe to toe and making sure they don't roll us like they did during COVID during the 2020 election. And then basically from the moment President Trump takes office, maybe even before, from transition to inauguration to the first 100 days in the executive orders he's going to pass, every single thing the Trump administration does from changing the color of the doorknobs to, you know, deporting 5 million people that have no business being here is going to be tied up in the courts. Now, we're dealing with a very different judiciary than we did when President Trump first took office in 2016, but Biden has had some time to undo some of those gains as

well, so it's not all good. And also, I'm very glad to say, you know, Republican lawfare is in a better place than it was a few years ago. You have groups like America First Legal and others that have really sharpened their swords and are ready to go toe to toe with these democratic activist organizations. But we're still going to be outgunned 100 to 1. And so what needs to happen? President Trump needs to have people inside that administration that are dotting every eye, crossing every T, and suiting up for battle. That's what every single policy initiative is going to be. He's going to need the people, the 4,800 political appointees that have to manage 2.2 million federal employees, and he's going to have to have the process and the tactics down pat.

My question is whether he can really gut the deep state, if that's possible. I mean, what Elon Musk did at Twitter, firing far more than 50% of the employees, the bloated Leviathan that was the bureaucracy running Twitter, just to get rid of them. It seems to me that we need something like that. the question is what is possible and who do you think would be the personnel that Trump would rely on to do that? I mean, I'm hoping that, you know, I don't know. Well, anyway, answer that question, but before I talk over you any more than I already have. Yeah.

What's possible is a really interesting question. I do think it's important for everyone to calibrate expectations. In the first four years of Trump term two, there's going to be a lot of. lot of triaging that needs to be done. The entire federal government's a mess, the world's a mess, the economy's a mess. And so recognizing that in any given moment, political capital is scarce, President Trump's going to have to choose to allocate it in a very careful way. And so the timeline that I'm a lot more interested in than just those four years is 12 years. What President Trump needs to do in his four years in office is do the kinds of things that make winning easier.

This is what the left is very good at. When the right gains power in a specific political domain, it takes the political capital that just earned with an election. It spends it all down and then it does whatever lobbyists want to do after that. What the left does is they use their political capital as a tool to build more political capital to do bigger and bigger things. And that's the mindset that I hope President Trump adopts in his second four years. We've got another segment with Sorab Sharma.

The website is AmericanM Moment.org. That's not you know I couldn't sleep, wouldn't sleep. Welcome back talking to Sorab Sharma. Sirab, I guess, you know, when we talk about a Trump administration, the key is just what you've said. How do you make sure that it's not just four years? Because it's going to take more than four years to undo the night. nightmare of the last 60. I mean, the bloating of the federal government, it's taken many, many decades, the deep state, the uniparty, the unelected bureaucrats who've been running Washington

without anybody giving them any trouble until Donald Trump, essentially, they've gotten away with it. What are some of the things that Trump might do immediately when he is elected? Well, the first thing I think he needs to do is end this weaponization of the justice system against conservatives. It is a chilling effect that has made political activity on behalf of the right enormously risky in our country. It means that fewer people raise their hand to participate in the political process and the people who do. The real MVPs on the board are distracted with, you know, $3 million in lawsuits and jail sentences. You know, my friend Steve Bannon is definitely chief amongst those in terms of someone who has way too much of his time. I'm taken up by dealing with Joe Biden's lawfare.

So the weaponization of justice system is very important. I think we need to get our foreign policy under control. Our State Department and Defense Department are basically a giant slush fund to reward the allies of democratic elites across the world, as well as neo-con elites. We need to restrain that spending all these wars that were involved with and bring some of that money back home. And then it's all about the economy. I think President Trump had one of the greatest economies we've ever seen when he was

president, you saw wages increasing on the low end for the first time. That was because of immigration. He used to shut down the border and he needs to deport 10 to 20 million people potentially. And then he needs to start bringing manufacturing back home so that we have blue-collar jobs that actually make things. You know, AI is going to do away with all these fake white-collar jobs. I'd like to see them instantly backfilled with real blue-collar jobs where we make things, produce things in this country again. If he does that, the Republican Party could see a period of unprecedented, you know, political support from the American people for 50 years. And, you know, real generational projects fixing the big problems that our country is facing will become possible

then. Do you have any ideas whom he might pick for vice president? At this point, I'm kind of rooting for J.D. Vance or General Flynn. Do you have any ideas along these lines? Look, I think that there is a shadow boxing match going around for who's going to be vice president. obviously I'm a huge supporter of J.D. Vance, if he got the nod, that'd be incredible. I think the president's going to choose someone he's comfortable with, someone he feels like, you know, is going to support him, unlike Vice President Pence did. My only recommendation to him is pick someone that they're just as scared of, if not more scared of than him so that it doesn't become, you know, there isn't all this surface area where people are like, well, we can solve a lot of the problem by just getting rid of him. So that's my only hope, but I think there's going to be a lot of people angling in the media for this job. for the next few months. And we're not going to know what's going to happen until right before the

RNC, I'd imagine. I think so. And while we just have a few seconds left, do you think with the polling as it is that Biden, that the Democrats who have to be melting down at this point will do something to put Biden aside and to have somebody that they think could win? No, I think it's Biden because at the end of the day, Biden, is the last figure that stitches together the modern Democratic Party because he's still Scranton Joe. He can still command, you know, basically meaningful numbers in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Everything after him is one freak show after another. So I think they're stuck with him for the foreseeable future.

It's going to be Biden versus Trump. Okay. We'll leave it there. Surab Sharma, terrific to be introduced to you and to introduce you to my audience. Hope to have you back. Folks, check out American Moment. org sarab thank you thank you