The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | January 25th, 2025: The Border Crackdown Has Already Begun & Trump Cleans House in DC

Episode Date: January 25, 2025

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: President Trump begins his second term with sweeping actions on the southern border, including executive orders to restart the border wall and reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy. Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies joins us to break it all down. In the national security realm, President Trump removes General Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and revokes security clearances for 51 intelligence officials, signaling a major shake-up in Washington. Steve Yates from The Heritage Foundation joins us in unpacking the implications. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's get ourselves briefed. What do you say? Today, we're taking a look at Donald Trump's first days back in office. Now, he wasted no time getting to work, starting with sweeping actions on the southern border. Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krakorian, well, he'll join us to break it all down. And then later in the show, we're turning to the National Security Front. From the purge of General Mark Millie, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the revocation of security clearances for 51 intelligence officials, well, President Trump is shaking up Washington's defense and intelligence establishment.

Senior Research Fellow for China, National Security Policy at the Heritage Foundation and good friend of the show, Steve Yates, he'll join us to unpack what it all means. But first, our situation reports spotlight. Well, in his first days back in office, President Trump has, as they say, hit the ground running, focusing on one of his hallmark priorities, border security. He's already signed several executive orders to bolster enforcement, including resuming construction of the border wall, expanding support for customs and border protection, and reinstating the remain-in-Mexico policy for asylum seekers. And it's not just policy on paper. Look, immigration

enforcement has already kicked into high gear. Reports are emerging of coordinated ice raids in cities across the country, targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records. I'm not quite sure who could argue against that concept. Joining us to break it all down is Mark Kerkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark, thanks very much for being with us here today on the Situation Report. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Let's start from the top. inauguration day was Monday. So when it comes to U.S. immigration policy, what's changed? What do you expect to change?

And what do you think might stay the same? Well, a lot has changed. That's what really needed to get done was changed. Trump ended the Biden policy of catch and release, where illegal aliens crossed over, turned themselves in, and then Biden let him go. He ended these mass parole programs, parole in an immigration sense, which is basically just letting people into the country who have no right to be here, inadmissible aliens. And there was like 2,500 a day.

They were just letting them schedule their illegal immigration, either at the Mexican border or flying into the interior and they'd let them go and they had work permits. It was just, it was crazy. So that's stuff they've just ended. The question is, of course, how much are they going to be able to unwind of what Biden did? And that's the kind of thing that's going to be, we're going to see how that works out. One of the big issues there is what are they going to do with all these Venezuela's? Because Mexico takes its own people back.

Central American countries are going to take their own people back. We don't have any relations with Venezuela. We don't even have air travel there. That's going to be a harder nut to crack. in the next few weeks and months. Well, I mean, I think it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not really just Venezuela. It's Haiti. It's Cuba.

We've got other places where it's going to be impossible at China to return some of these individuals back to their own countries is going to be, as you pointed out, almost impossible. Well, they're thinking outside the box. First of all, inside the box, there's a provision in the law that says, if a country isn't taking back its own people, we're supposed to stop issuing new visas. And that's the kind of thing that will get the CHICOM's attention. If we say, okay, well, we're not all, you know, no more student visas starting today until you start taking your people back, that'll get their attention.

The interesting thing is they are thinking outside the box too, and they apparently are have a deal or are working on a deal with Mexico to deport the Venezuelans to Mexico and then pay Mexico to deport them to Venezuela because they have relations with Venezuela. We don't. And so that would be interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Somebody's thinking outside the box. And the Mexicans are willing to go along because next year, that free trade agreement we have with them is up for renegotiation.

And that's way more important to them than a bunch of Venezuelan scumbags protecting them. They couldn't care less about that. It seems like, and maybe you've got more detail on this, I've seen some initial reporting that indicates that the Mexican government is, you know, they may say one thing, but they're basically operationally, they're on board because it looks like they're building some holding facilities, some deportation centers on their side of the border in some of the border cities in anticipation of essentially a number of deportees or a flood of, how we want to refer to it, a wave of deportees coming back across into Mexico.

Absolutely. And the issue isn't Mexican illegal aliens, because, Mexico always takes its own citizens back. They've never been a, they've never made problems there. It's Central Americans and others. And, you know, both out of fear of Trump, mainly I think out of fear of Trump, they are saying, look, we'll play ball with getting rid of these non-Mexicans as long as you help pay the costs and they're not, and we don't end up stuck with them here. When you mentioned just a moment ago, you mentioned, um, you know, the possibility of unwinding some of Biden's actions.

If we just go to the top line there and say that one of the Biden actions was to have a policy that essentially allowed in millions and millions of illegal immigrants, right? Has anyone settled on an actual number for the course of the Biden administration, how many came across the southern border? Our estimate is, and some of our allies don't like it because it's not high enough, But our estimate is at least 8 million, maybe 9 million illegal immigrants. Most of them actually taken into custody and then let go on purpose. But then an additional two, maybe 3 million who got past the Border Patrol because

the Border Patrol was busy being a Walmart greeter for all the other illegal aliens and they couldn't do their own jobs. So 8 to 9 million, I think is a plausible number. And remember, some illegal aliens already here left during that time. So that wasn't the growth in the illegal population. That was just a number of people who came in. And you've just pointed out that known gotaways could be upwards of two, possibly as high as three million.

Nobody knows. Well, no. The known gotaways are, yeah, two, two and a half million, but there's unknown gotaways because the term gotaway is people that they know crossed. They have photographic evidence, censor his. It's something. There's people who don't know cross, and we have no idea what that number is. So what about, I heard something interesting earlier today from a Democrat strategist. And it is interesting to watch them kind of spin all of this now in the wake of the election.

And finally what, for some of them anyway, has realization that, you know, a lot of America actually supports the concept of deporting, especially deporting illegal immigrants with criminal convictions. Again, I don't know who opposes that. But, you know, they essentially were trying to argue that, look, okay, fine, it's the first few days of the Trump administration, you know, the much vaunted deportation of rest, you know, the sort of the sweeps through the urban centers to pick up some of these folks. But their argument was, nothing's really changed. The numbers are still the same, you know, in terms of deportations.

The Biden administration was on board with this, and they were working hard to deported. people. Do we know how many individuals were actually deported during the course of the Biden administration? It was less than four years of Trump, although it depends on how you count who was deported. And I don't mean to get into the weeds, but remember there was something called Title 42 during COVID where the Border Patrol could just bounce people back, it didn't matter whether you said asylum, it didn't matter, they just threw you out. Those bulked up the numbers for Trump, I mean, for Biden, frankly. So we're going to see significant numbers

of people, but it's not just numbers. It's who's getting deported because they're starting, they're pursuing a worst first policy, you know, the gang bangers and what have you, but most illegal immigrants aren't gangbangers. They're just regular working stations. Those people have to go too. And that's going to happen once they start doing work site enforcement. rains on factories and what have you. And that's coming. Oman said it's coming. Now, let me ask you about that because, look, I live out west in an agricultural state.

And the reality is, you know, two things can be true at one time, right? You can argue that we need to deal with this problem, meaning that something has to be done. Deportation has to take place, as it has with previous administrations. I think I read that during the Obama's administration, three million deportations took place. So this is not something new. But the other side of that coin is it will be very disruptive to a number of sectors in the U.S., including the agricultural sector. So, you know, where do we go with that? How do you envision this taking place?

It's one thing to say you're going to remove the 700,000 or so illegal. immigrants with criminal convictions. Again, everybody should be able to get on board with that. And as with the 1.4 million or so illegal immigrants who have already been adjudicated for deportation, when you start going after the others, I guess that's what I'm trying to drill down here, and I'm not doing it very eloquently. But Mark, can you talk to me about that process? How you envision that happening? What sort of pushback are we going to get? What's the reality of it? There's one thing to say we're going to do it, but what do you imagine will actually be the The first thing to keep in mind is anything like that would be a process, not an event.

In other words, it's not as though you're going to wake up one morning and all the illegal aliens are gone. It's going to be a process of sort of continual enforcement whittling down the illegal population and causing significant numbers of people to go home on their own so they avoid arrest. That's what happened during the big deportation push under Eisenhower. Most of the people who left, most of the illegals who left, left on their own. They weren't taken into custody by the border roll. To get to the agricultural thing, only a tiny share of the illegal population works in ag. I mean, like less than 5% of the illegal workforce works in agriculture.

They're almost all in city jobs, you know, construction, services, you name it. And there is an unlimited guest worker program for ag, the H2A program. which I'm not even a big fan of, but it exists. And the problem is farmers don't want to use it. They say there's too much red tape, what have you, too many requirements. You have to provide housing and whatever. Well, too bad. You know, use the program that's available.

And the goal needs to be to wean those sectors off of the use of illegal labor. And even in agriculture, that's possible. Because, let's face it, there's no illegal labor. aliens harvesting wheat in North Dakota or corn in Iowa, they're doing, they're working in fresh fruit and vegetable agriculture and even there, they're working in the portion that is for fresh sale in the supermarket as opposed to processing, like tomatoes. Tomatoes that you get tomato sauce, nobody touches those all harvested by machine. It's fresh stuff.

So even there, technology advances and makes it to. possible for more and more labor to be replaced. And if we have to import blueberries, because there's just no way to grow, not blueberries, but blackberries, no way to grow them without massive, cheap third world labor. Well, then let's just import the blueberries instead of import the blueberry pickers. But the point is, we need agriculture to evolve the way the rest of the economy has, away from the medieval way that it's now done. They use modern technology, but the labor relations are medieval. It's just incredible. Yeah, I mean, it also, it permeates the dairy industry. It permeates the meat processing,

poultry operations. All of which there is real mechanization alternatives that cost money, and so employers don't want to pursue them. Mark, if you'll stay right there, we've got to take a quick break, but then we'll be right back with Mark Prokorean, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Now's the time to save on new carpet at the Home Depot. Receive 10% off your total carpet project and 12 months special financing. Plus, we'll measure your space for free. Choose from a variety of stylish, on-trend options fit for everyday life with life-proof, life-proof with pet-proof technology, home decorators collection, and traffic mass. master carcets. Save 10% and get 12 months special financing. Now at the Home Depot. Offer valid April 16th through May 3rd,

2006. Exclusions apply for licenses. See Home Depot.com slash license numbers. This episode is brought to you by Welch's fruit snacks. Big news for your kids' lunchbox. Welch's fruit snacks are now made without any artificial dyes. A snack parents can feel good about and the same delicious taste kids can't get enough of. All made with no artificial dyes. Try Wilch's fruit snacks today. It's said everything happens for a reason, but maybe everything happens for a recess. Take noise-canceling headphones. Do they block hearing to heightened taste?

Hmm. That sound seems to show. Everything happens for a recesses. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Mark Kerkorian. He's the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark, thanks very much for sticking around. Very much appreciated.

We covered some ground there. There's a lot to go through. Let me ask you this. Could the administration, I guess what I'm concerned about with the incoming or with now the Trump administration is that they've got a lot of plans, obviously, and they want to get moving very quickly. The first term, I would argue, the Trump administration had some messaging issues, right? They had some communication problems that, you created more trouble for them than they needed.

And when we're talking about the immigration policy, this idea that they're going to move, I'm fascinated by this idea that they're going to move from at some point going after the immigrants with criminal convictions or that have been adjudicated for deportation already, and that would be about $2.1 million if you look at some of the statistics. It varies a little bit. But then moving on to the six or seven million possibly other illegal immigrants. in the country, I guess what I'm imagining is the inability to get that done because of how Washington works. And I guess what I'm, I keep kind of coming back to the same question looking for you to help me out with this. Are they setting themselves up for a problem by sort of ramping up their

base, getting their base to imagine that this is going to happen when in reality the dysfunction of Washington, D.C. and the way that politics works there means that it may all just get stalled. Yeah, I mean, it's not all going to get stalled, but I think your basic point is that maybe they've raised expectations too high is valid. That could be a problem. But, you know, as JD said, I think it was after the election, or maybe even during the campaign, he said, look, let's deport the first million, and then we'll work on the second million, and then we'll work on the third million. was one thing at a time. But yes, I think the presidents may have raised expectations higher than is realistic, but it's not even so much that there's Washington dysfunction and paralysis and all

that. There is some to that. It's just that, you know, how many people can you deport at one time? I mean, this isn't, you know, a Cecil B. DeMille movie with Ten Commandments and everybody's, you know, masses of people crossing the Red Sea or something. I mean, this takes work. And, you know, a significant number will leave on their own because that's the insight is you have fewer people coming in and more people going out. And so the number shrinks. Shrinkage is, in other words, it's the vector.

It's the direction things are going is the key thing to look at. And will they deport everybody by, you know, the end of this term? No, they're not going to. In fact, they're probably never going to be deporting everybody because I'm kind of a squish on amnesty eventually. They need to restore control. They need to squeeze the number down. Get the enforcement systems in place, not just the commitment, but the systems, like

E-Verify, like a proper check-in, checkout system for visitors. They have to get sanctuary cities under control. Once that happens, I'm willing to talk. But that's not something that should even be on the agenda now. That's like the second term of the JD Vance administration. We talk about that. Yeah, I think that's very logical. You've raised a really important point that somehow gets overlooked, right, which is the idea

of, I don't know what you would call it diminishing returns or whatever, but if you do successfully, you know, create and maintain border security, right, then you have limited and dropped that number, that number now starts decreasing about who's coming across the border illegally. And that seems to get lost in the wash sometimes because people just imagine, well, okay, it's all about just kicking everybody out. You enforce the law. The illegal population shrinks through attrition.

It's not going to get to zero, but nothing's perfect in the world. You know what I mean? You deal with reality as it is. And the main thing I'm looking for is that four years from now, the illegal population is smaller than it is now. No, no, that makes perfect sense. Let's switch just slightly, still staying on immigration policies. Birthright citizenship. Talk to me about that. Well, Trump said, you know, I will end it by, you know, executive order. He can't really end it on his own, but what he can do is start the litigation that will end it. Now, birthright citizenship means anybody born here, literally

anybody, even frankly to foreign diplomats, let alone tourists and students and illegal aliens, automatically a kid's a U.S. citizen. Every developed country in the world except Canada that had that policy has now ended it. Because in the modern world, it just is not sustainable. In the old days, you couldn't take a three-week vacation in another country because it took you three weeks just to get to your next village. I mean, it was just different back then. We need to end it so that only kids born to U.S. citizens and green card holders, permanent residents, I get automatic citizenship. But I like the way Australia did it.

What they did is, that's what they changed the law, but said, if the kid lives his first 10 years of his life without an eruption in Australia, then he gets to be a citizen. In other words, like a statute of limitations. It makes sense. We got to get to that point, but nothing's going to happen until we start the ball rolling, and that's what the president did with an executive order this week, to say federal agencies should no longer treat newborns automatically as U.S. citizens unless they can prove that they have at least one U.S. citizen or green card parent. And where that plays out is the Social Security

Administration and the State Department. In other words, don't issue passports and don't No issue social security numbers to newborns unless, you know, one parent at least is a citizen or a legal resident. That's on hold. The judge just enjoying that or temporarily stalled, which is fine, which is the way it should be. Because it's got to get to the Supreme Court. Yeah. No, I think I'm sorry.

The State Department, the consular fams or the regulations, I think do have policies in place talking about how long someone needs to be living in the U.S. in order to pass along with citizenship. I'm foggy over. I used to know some of those details fairly well. But that's for passing it on. If you're a U.S. citizen and have a kid abroad and then that kid abroad as a kid, that's this. What we're talking about here is people born in the U.S. too foreigners. Which ones get to be citizens and which ones don't. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Now, I think it will face as well probably a number of these executive orders will face a variety of legal disputes so I agree with you I don't think I don't think the federal judge who who said that

the birthright citizenship executive order was unconstitutional I that was probably expected all the way well no he didn't rule on it he just said it needs to be enjoying temporarily until we have until we litigated so he didn't even rule on it okay I think he meant I think he commented that he thought it was unconstitutional, but I think it was, but that was outside of, that was outside of his, as legal, you know, move on. Yeah, that. Right. It's the Supreme Court's yeah, decide. Right. Exactly. If all things being equal, if you, if you look at the executive orders done so far and realizing that inauguration day was Monday, when it comes to immigration policies, which one do you consider to be the most important so far that's been put in place?

I got to say the end of catch and release where instructing the Border Patrol that they are not to be letting people go, period. You know, there are things that follow from that. They need enough detention space to detain people. But that's the fundamental thing is not letting people go once you have them in custody. Because if you do, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a It's game over. They'll send their selfies home and say, La Migra let us go, come on up, and they'll let you go too. So that's the single most important thing to end right away. And to your point, that's one of those actions that can actually stop the flow of incoming illegal cross-ex or immigrants. Because nobody's going to spend all the money and take the risk

if the odds of getting let go are low. When the odds are high, they're like, hey, it's worth it. let's take the chance. When the odds are not good, then some people will still do it, but it's not going to be as attractive. And so you're not going to have the huge numbers we've been seeing. The CBP1 app, what is your best number for how many individuals came into the country under that app? There's two ways they used it, either at the Mexican border like your footage is showing here,

or people who flew over the border and came to air. airports. It's over a million people because there's different pieces of it, but it's well over a million people came in that way. And they got work permits too. They were paroled in. It's astonishing. And the rationale from Biden was, well, this is how we reduce illegal crossings at the border. Well, sure, if you just let everybody in, there's no more illegal immigration. It was crazy. So that stopped right away. I mean, they stopped that at, you know, 12, over. one on Monday afternoon. Wait a minute.

Is that accurate? Is that exactly? Is that what they said was why CBP1 was important? Yeah, no, that was their rationale. Was this how we reduce illegal border crossings by just letting people line up and come through the ports of entry and schedule their illegal immigration? It was, it's bananas. All right.

So that's, that's been kicked to the curb. And then the policy that was in place. for Haiti and Venezuela, Cuba. Yeah, that's one of them. That's one of the two uses of CBP-1, was this Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela program where they didn't have to go to the border. They just were able to fly over the border into the United States, and they didn't have to come from Haiti or Venezuela.

We actually got, we had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request. There were people flying in. They were nationals of those countries. But they were living in Fiji and France and Vietnam. And, I mean, it's like, well, then why did they need to come here? They already were someplace, you know, not their own country. Yeah, whatever happened to that concept that when you were seeking asylum, asylum was the first safe haven that you landed in or you arrived in?

Yeah. That never, unfortunately, never really existed. It should exist, obviously. But no, we got people passing under Biden. We had people passing through eight, ten, twelve countries before they got to. the U.S. border and they let him in anyway. It's insane. I mean, no one who gets to the U.S. border should even be allowed to apply for asylum because they've, by definition, passed through other countries. I understand that it appears as if anyway that in essentially calling for a state

of emergency down the southern border, that brings into play Defense Department resources, the U.S. military in terms of the ease of which you can access those resources. Talk to me about that. Have you heard anything about the deployment of U.S. military forces to perhaps bolster what the CBP is doing? As I understand it, the Pentagon has already assigned 1,500 troops, I think Army, but I'm not exactly sure, to the border. And it's not like they're going to be, you know, carrying rifles and patrolling the border. I expect they're going to be, number one, doing, helping with transportation, helping with detention. and they may well for this would be new doing ride-alongs with the Border Patrol.

So you'd be able to have a Border Patrol agent and say a soldier at, you know, instead of two Border Patrol agents. So that way it's basically leveraging the Border Patrol because those are the guys who know immigration law, not the soldiers don't. And the other thing that'll be new is they've talked about using military aircraft to do the deportations. That's just a capacity question. But the point is we wouldn't have to charter aircraft.

We'd be using military aircraft to fly people back to wherever, Central America or whatever. Well, Mark, being mindful of your time, and I'm going to have to wrap this up. But what I'd love to do is get you back here with us on a situation report in a couple of months' time. Let the first 60, 90 days shake out and then see where we are and do an assessment from your perspective as to how things are moving along. Yeah, love to. That would be excellent. Listen, Mark, Corcorian, from the Center for Immigration Studies, always, always appreciate you giving us your time. Thank you very, very much.

Coming up, we turn our focus to the National Security Front. President Trump has already made a number of moves, perhaps you've heard of some of them, from ousting General Mark Millie as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to revoking security clearances for dozens of former intelligence officials. Steve Yates, a man about town and also with the Heritage Foundation, he'll join us to break it all down. Stay with us. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfume

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Welcome back to the PDB situation report. President Trump's first days back in office haven't just been busy. well, they've been transformative, especially on the national security front. One of his first major actions was removing General Mark Millie as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signaling a shift in the leadership of America's military. He also reportedly had Mark Millie's portrait taken down off the wall at the Pentagon. In addition, the president has revoked security clearances for dozens of former intelligence officials. Among them are those who signed a letter, you remember that letter during the 2020 election, claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop could be or was Russian

disinformation, a claim that obviously has since been debunked. So what are these actions signal about Trump's priorities for America's defense strategy? Joining us to discuss is Steve Yates, senior research fellow for China and national security policy at the Heritage Foundation, good friend of the show and general man about town. Steve, thanks very much for joining us here on the Situation Report. Thank you, Mike. It's great to be with you again. Excellent. Well, you'll think differently after we talk for a little bit. So we've got, what do we have? Oh, the inauguration took place on Monday. And we've had about 17 or 18,000 executive orders signed.

But let's, we have so much to discuss here, Steve. Let's start with one of the more interesting stories. According to reports, the portrait of General Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs of Chairman. has been pulled off the wall in the corridor where they have all the other portraits of the former joint chiefs of staff chairman. An important policy decision or being petulant? You tell me.

Well, I mean, I'm okay with removing all the portraits of generals that suggested they were going to call the Chinese Communist Party and give them a heads up if the commander-in-chief was seeking to do something to them. If that story was true, then I think the removal of the portrait is, a good down payment on what I ought to come. Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked by little things here or there. And just for those that are keeping score, within an hour of the inauguration at 2021, I was leading a non-profit grantee organization of the federal government and received an illegal termination letter from the Biden team. Could have spent a year's salary fighting it? And then what?

win a chance to work for the people who didn't want me there. But so just in case anyone thought that this was the only time people might be petty and whatever else, it's been going on a bit. So I'm not shocked that it's going back the other way. And Millie was outspoken in some other areas that are just not with the program that seems to be, soon to be, Secretary Pete is going to be putting through the building. Yeah. Yeah, we can talk about that here shortly.

but I'm glad you raised that point. Look, it's, you know, and I talk about his portrait sort of tongue in cheek because this is the sort of thing that happens every time an administration changes, right? And so, you know, there's been some coverage of the removal of the portrait that I thought was interesting because they acted like this is the first time anybody studying Petulant as opposed to perhaps removing keys from, you know, computer keyboards. That happened in my office in 2001. There was no W in the vice president's office, national security staff computers. Exactly. Yes. So it goes on. Look, and it's just, it's almost like a game that gets played in Washington, D.C. Okay, so let's, let's, I guess, start with foreign policy. Where do you fall down with Senator Rubio, well, former Senator Rubio, now as Secretary of State? How do you feel about that appointment? Well, I find it to be very reassuring in the sense that he's got a pretty long record of pretty deep exposure on almost every area of foreign policy.

He has run for president and got out deeper than the average bear in the intersection between national politics and where foreign policy might be. and he flew very close to the sun in the 2016 cycle. The wings melted. He came back to Earth but survived and seems to have come up with a way to understand the movement that has reelected Donald Trump that goes beyond just the man. And he seems to have found a way to get along with the man, too, which all says to me. I mean, I was in politics before. It wasn't necessarily the greatest of successes you learned from your losses in a way. But Rubio is on another level in that.

And so I see a sense of maturity in him in doing this. I think he'll be an asset articulating what this America First foreign policy agenda is going to be. But, you know, the world is a tricky place. I expect we're going to get some challenges coming up in 2025 after the dust settles. And we'll see how the team works when it really matters. Yeah, no, I agree. I like Rubio's experience. I think he's well suited for that position.

And I think he brings some really interesting background to it. So, yeah, I'd give that high marks as well. You've got a good confirmation. Any indication. Good start. Yeah. It's a good start. Yeah.

Any insight into, and I realize that, you know, we're days into the Trump administration. But any insight into possible shifts in policy or, you know, Will it be much the same related to Ukraine and the Russia conflict? Well, very, very clear that the president is going to push hard for some kind of terms that, as he puts it, ends the killing. And if you can get a cessation of hostilities, then you start trying to come up with some kind of a framework that is short term, medium term, where you try to work out reconstruction of affected areas.

There have to be questions of what boundaries of Ukraine are going to be recognized, how peace is kept in the Russian occupied areas that they're not likely to give up in the near term, even under some kind of a ceasefire or peace agreement. So there's a lot of working pieces in that, and pretty clear he's going to be pushing Europe pretty hard that Europeans can and should afford to do more for other Europeans. having Andy Puzzler as the ambassador to the EU, I think is really interesting. And having Matt Whitaker go to be ambassador to NATO. Matt is an Iowa football-sized ambassador, a strong mind, an attorney, was acting attorney general before.

He's going to be a force on behalf of the president's agenda. Those two will be a really interesting team engaging Europe as they try to. work that through. But the president's tried to put some feelers out for where Vladimir Putin is on this stuff. We don't have to like the fellow in Moscow to understand that if you're really going to have some kind of enduring peace agreement, you're going to have to talk to him. I don't understand why Biden didn't do that. But I think here we are and we're just going to be watching. And of course, General Keith Kellogg has been made special envoy specifically to work through all of that. And he and his friends at the America First Policy Institute have laid out some plausible benchmarks for that, but we'll have to see what reality is now that the team's in government. Yeah, I like Keith Kellogg being where he is right now. I think he's a stable force. What do you make of President Trump's comments over the past 24 hours related to Putin?

It seems like there's a change in tone or a change in intact towards Putin, talking about how Putin is failing the Russian people, you know, the damage to the economy. It strikes me as harsher than folks would have imagined he would, he would, language he would use related to Putin. Yeah, I think that people have mostly focused on his statements over the years where he talks about how well he gets along with some of these tough guys around the world. to me, this is just Trump 101, where he is constantly shaping the information environment and constantly shaping the relationship environment to try to set up terms for negotiation. And so if you're going in and you're trying to push for some kind of concessions or agreements

and you're talking up how strong and smart the other guy is, maybe that opens the door, but you might want to remind him where his vulnerabilities are, and we know so they doesn't get too greedy in what the aspiring position might be for where this dust should settle with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So I just see that as Trump being Trump. And I think it's going to be very hard to see where the conversation with Putin comes down until they really get into it. This is a really tough situation. You know it very, very well. I mean, having taken Crimea decisively so many years ago and not really having to give any

of it back is a pretty bad down payment on where this could end up in this second invasion. Yeah, it doesn't look like, at least the terms that Moscow has suggested to date basically equate to surrender on the part of Ukraine, you know, everything from reducing their military to a fifth of its current size, to, you know, not joining NATO, to, you know, ceding all that territory that they currently, the Russians currently hold, et cetera, et cetera. It's unacceptable terms. But it does seem as if there's noise. Yeah, exactly. Asking for everything, which is kind of what you would expect from someone like Putin. But it does seem as if we're hearing sounds from both sides, Zelensky and Putin, that, yes, they're aware the reality is that they need to

bring this to a close. And I think Trump's move, him talking about the damage that Putin's doing to the Russian economy, I think is very smart because I think that is a severe weak link for Putin. And he can't continue spending. He can't afford this adventurism going forward. So I think there's some real logic in Trump pointing that out. I'm going to be jumping around here, Steve. So you're going to have to excuse me. You got to because there's lots of different topics. And let's talk about not necessarily foreign policy, but it touches on it. The Trump administration has now pulled the security details for Pompeo, Mike Pompeo, for John Bolton, for Brian Hook. Is there any indication that they had intelligence that indicates those threats have gone from the Iranian regime,

that there's no longer a threat from the Iranian regime? Or how do you interpret this move by the Trump administration? Well, it is kind of the power play. I think there's to a lot of Americans, I mean, there's two things with the security clearances versus the security details. The security details were being provided because of the elimination of Iran's top spy when he made the mistake of hanging out in Iraq. And the Iranians had threatened retaliation. Of course, the Iranians had threatened assassination of President Trump over the course of this presidential campaign, too. And so this isn't just idle words and playing around. But I think to a lot of Americans, they might be surprised that any of these powers,

officials still have active security clearances and why would they, why should they? People that swim in the swamp know that these security clearances are keys to the realm to get some consulting contracts might be good for onward advisement on boards or whatever else. But to most people, they probably think, hey, when the door closes and you're out, why are you cleared for anything anyway? I think that's a separate issue. I've long advocated that unless you have some really mission relevant, active program you're working on, you really shouldn't have an active security clearance. But I've been an outlier for many years. I think John Ratcliffe is going to put some reforms in place that might be more in the direction of my predisposition, but let's

see. The details part is a little bit surprising. I've traveled with Pompeo and he definitely had a diplomatic security and other security detail with them. Robert O'Brien had his detail pulled back much earlier, but he supplemented it with private security, which is frankly what these other guys should do. And if you're at John Bolton and you thought that you could do the, let me say, inglorious thing of writing a book while you're in office as National Security Advisor that smears the guy you're supposed to be serving, well, then you shouldn't be shocked that anything gets pulled back. And maybe you should reach into that bag of cash you got for the book and pay for your own darn security.

If you're Pompeo, you former Secretary of State, former DCI, you know, there may be a question how long this should last, but this seemed to be a political move. We'll see how it plays out. Before anyone just sort of gets to wound up with the heartstrings about it, I think these guys can afford to pay for their own security at this point. And if there's a real threat, then yeah, we should protect Americans that are at risk. Yeah. No, I think there are two separate issues.

I'll set aside the security clearances issue for a second. But from my perspective, you know, the operational aspects are what's important. So, you know, I would look at it from, if I were the Trump administration, I would look at it from, look, do we have any credible, relevant, corroborated intelligence right now that indicates that the threat has been reduced and has been mitigated in some fashion from the Iranian regime? Because as you pointed out, it's not idle talk. And so I'm interested in this because if they don't have actionable intelligence that says that threat has been reduced, then they're in a sense, and this is going to sound odd, but in a sense, they're taking a real chance here because you put those details that are in place. And if something does happen, it's going to overshadow anything else you're attempting to do for the foreseeable future. So I'm concerned on that regard. But again, maybe they've got actionable intelligence that says that the threat has been reduced.

And if that's the case, then fine. Don't go anywhere. Just stay right where you are. We have to take a quick break. And then we'll be right back with Steve Yates. When you have four new tires, every drive feels fresh. Right now, buy three select tires and get one for just a dollar during the Cadillac certified service fresh start tire event. Visit Cadillac.com

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Welcome back to the BDB Situation Report. And joining me again is Steve Yates. Steve, thanks for sticking around. Let me switch gears just a little bit. President Trump has signed, what, a couple hundred thousand executive orders in the first couple of days. From your perspective, national security, foreign policy, whatever it may be, which do you consider to be the most impactful executive order that he's signed so far?

Well, I mean, there's really a lot to draw from because there's a lot of statement setting executive orders that are out there. I mean, one that might seem silly, but you've got to show up to work order might be really, really consequential because even in the national security space, there are a lot of people that have not been showing up to work every day since COVID. Now it was 2020, 2021. We're in 2025 now. And so that might seem a small thing, but I think it'll make a little bit of difference

the I'm going to tell you not to interrupt you Steve but I don't think it's a small thing at all I'm actually really glad you brought that one up because look as a business owner myself I've had the same experience that a lot of

entrepreneurs and business owners have with staff and I've got a wonderful staff look I've got great people working with me but over the past handful of years it's been tough to implement any sort of even a, you know, three-day two-on or two-off policy, right? So getting people back in the office,

if you're a federal employee, I think is a really smart move. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's one of those things where if you don't, if you don't show up, why are we providing this building? And are we sure we need your full-time if you're not giving us your full-time? And so I think that's a really, really important move to remind people of for whom they work and to whom they're accountable. But beyond that, it might not seem like national security, but I think it really sets up the strategic competition with China in a profound way. It was this massive announcement of a half a trillion dollar potential investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.

I consider this to be like the space race of the past or the Manhattan. project on nuclear weapons, where we're going to invest in the architecture that we need, the energy, baseload energy that we need, the real estate cooling capabilities, the personnel, all the things that are necessary to stay in a leading role in this and win the future on AI, those inputs are going to have spillover effects for our economy, for our military, supply chains. I think it has the potential to revolutionize not just how we think about America, but what Americans real comprehensive national power is. And without having to attack China, I think we and our responsible allies really have a way to chart a path toward peace and prosperity

that kind of leaves them in the dust unless they behave more responsibly and more accountably. So I think that's actually a massive, massive deal. Okay. I just made a note Chinese regime to behave more responsibly. Yeah. We can hold our breath for that day. Will we, we visit that issue at some other point? How does the Chinese regime view this announcement of the Stargate Project? That's what we're talking about here. It's the codename the Stargate project, the half trillion dollar investment in AI. How do you think the Chinese regime views that announcement? Well, it's like a lot of things. They had been trying to corner the market, and we in the West, more broadly, have enabled them to somewhat corner the market on the inputs necessary for a high-tech, modern manufacturing export economy.

And we've become overly dependent upon them. They are trying to corner the market on inputs for batteries. They're trying to corner the market on developing increasingly advanced chips. And even some of the lower grade chips are still really important to our supply chains. And so I think this is a down payment on telling them, we're serious about coming back and we're serious about competing and we're serious about not being dependent on you. That's not going to change things tomorrow or next week or next month. But it does shift things into another gear. And if the Chinese are thinking in cycles longer than the news cycle or our political cycle, this is going to resonate with them in a way that maybe causes them.

to have to think twice about pushing too hard too fast. Here's a question out of the blue. Our old friend Gordon Chang has talked to me about how, in his view, China is on a war footing with us in the U.S. And the U.S. just doesn't realize it or chooses not to pay attention or whatever. How do you feel about that? I think Gordon is largely right. And the concept of war is different for the Communist Party than it is for most Americans,

even in American leadership because they follow kind of a people's war mentality. It's a comprehensive thing that involves everything from ideological and political war to being involved in economic warcraft. And so they've been engaged in a lot of elements of classical warfare for the whole period of pretty generous engagement we've had with them. And I think we've just sort of to sober up to elements of it. And a lot of the threats that they pose to us can do pretty bad damage without there having to be a classical war where aircraft carriers are moving and missiles are flying.

There's a lot that they can do with bio threats and cyber threats and human threats. Even if you just look at the merger of a bio agent and drone technology, we have a terrifying level of vulnerability on that front from my point of view. I wouldn't want to encourage them on that, but I do think that, again, this investment in AI and the kinds of technologies that will be related to it give us the best shot of preserving a sense of homeland security and eliminating some of those vulnerabilities. So I think Gordon is largely right about the direction. We don't get to know when or how they choose to do things.

COVID was something in that. Fentanyl is something in that. The balloon was something in that. But there's more elements to it. And I think we've got an administration now that is taking some of the layers of that more seriously. And so everything from the Ag Department to our secretary of interior being in charge of the Energy Commission that the president is using is going to look at our federal lands and the resources there.

It just shows us serious as a purpose to lessen that dependence and kind of make us better prepared for contingencies. But that military manufacturing supply chain, that's the mother load. We are way behind on that. And so I hope that all this money is going to be investing in that. Yeah. How would you describe the Trump administration's stance or view perspective on Taiwan? Well, I think that there's a mix as far as I can tell of what the public statements have been.

Of course, the public statements of the president are going to matter more than the chattering classes that kind of occupy the rings below him and agencies. But there's a clear sense that Xi Jinping stating things like having plausible military options by 2027 have not gone unnoticed. The pressure that has been very obvious in Europe to increase defense spending and provide for self-defense and collective defense is echoed in Asia. And there's been a movement in the right direction in several quarters. The challenge we have is that democracies can. can have divided government. We have South Korea with a lot of natural assets that are relevant

to all of this that are sort of crucifying themselves politically right now with two impeachments in a row of a president and an acting president. We have to see how that sorts out, but we have a military alliance and a manufacturing supply chain on tech, but also shipbuilding that's really, really critical there that is going to matter. Japan has increased defense spending and done things in a categories outside of defense like Coast Guard activity that's meaningful to maritime security in the region. And they're working with the Philippines in ways that seem to have awakened. All of that is not direct Taiwan, but around Taiwan, it complicates the freedom of action that

China has had. And it sort of solidifies that first island chain in ways that the United States doesn't have to play a direct role, but the Trump team is going to have to do some direct things. That supply chain matters. paid for billions of dollars in articles that were supposed to be delivered in 2023. It's 2025 and they're nowhere to be seen. That's on us. We got to make sure that we're building things on time and at cost before we're job-boning allies to pay more.

Right. And I'm glad you mentioned shipbuilding. We are being outpaced significantly, massively, bigly, if I could use that. Yeah? By the Chinese regime. It's at least as important as the missile gap was when Kennedy was trying to to bring it up, leaving aside real or unreal. This is a real gap.

And I think it's strategically possibly the most important gap we have. Interesting. I'm going to shift gears yet again, Steve. I'm going to move jurisdictions. The southern border with Mexico, and specifically the labeling of cartels in Mexico as terrorist organizations. How do you see that playing out? What could be the practical results of something like that?

Well, I'll have to separate a little bit of the personal and the practical on this one because I have a personal skid in the game on what happens with the cartels and the Chinese money launderers that work with them because the fentanyl that they work on killed my daughter. And I want some retribution on that front. And so do hundreds of thousands of other American families. But in terms of the practical operations of this, if you look at it just from a policy view, after 9-11, a lot of tools were opened up under terrorism or designations, whether they were treasury tools that were used to go after funds to close accounts, squeeze people, special sanctions that could be targeted on individuals. There are also approvals for action that could be taken in the clandestine side of the government once you move into this category that otherwise wouldn't be dealt with the same way. I mean, I don't think any American can step back and say that the cartels haven't already been at war with us.

And what they've been doing in American society is at least as significant as a terrorist act. that people would usually think of whether it's the Twin Towers, the Pentagon getting hit, other kinds of actions. But what does it really mean? I strongly suspect there's going to be some demonstrated hit on those capabilities within the first few months of the administration. And I expect that there's going to be a reaction to that. We're going to have to see how that plays out.

I hope what it actually means, though, is that key bank accounts in Mexico and in Asia, get a quick thaw. and we'll see whether they make a recalibration on their business as a result of those financial measures. But, you know, it's a really important move. I think it's been waiting for a long time and we'll have to see what the response is. Yeah, I agree with you 100% on that. It's long overdue from my perspective as well. And it will be interesting to see because obviously this doesn't happen in a bubble, right?

This requires involvement from the Mexican government, the new. the president of Mexico. And I suspect that they will be on board with it. I mean, it's going to take a certain shape. I don't think they're going to be publicly necessarily supportive of the move, but I think ultimately they'll play ball because they will also see it perhaps in their own best interest. Well, it's dangerous. I mean, they face life and death in their own country, and we may too in some ways in response to this. And that really can't be taken lightly. It's one thing to talk about making these moves, but these cartels have horrifying lethal capabilities, and because of dastardly policies in our own country, they have reach in a lot of

our communities. And so if they really want to make Americans feel pain, they can't and they might, and we have to be careful about that. Right. Right. But I think it is, I think it's a solid step in the right direction in terms of the necessary. The problem.

Steve, listen, we got a lot more to come. as you get I've got pages pages of things to ask you questions about it just means you got to come back man listen Steve Yates senior research fellow for China National Security Policy at the Heritage Foundation and and a sharp dresser too might I add I've got to come here I'm here listen thank you very much to Steve for joining us I look forward to seeing you get here soon always a pleasure thank you Mike all right well that is all the time we have for the PDB situation report for this weekend listen if you have any questions or comments please reach out to me at Bdb at thefirsttv.com you know what we do with your questions and comments of

course you know what happens is that the mailman drops off the mailbags and then our team goes through all your questions and comments and we smush them all together into monthly Ask Me Anything episodes so please send in your notes and if you haven't already please still there's still time send me your New Year's resolutions I'd love to compile a special episode of Ask Me anything based around all your various New Year's resolutions. To listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, well, it's simple. Just become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting bdb premium.com.

I told you that it was simple. It's very simple. I'm Mike Baker. Until next time, well, you know the drill. Stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's

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