Will Cain Country - Round Two: Trump vs. Musk, MAGA vs. Mars (ft. Julian Epstein)

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Story #1: Will takes you on the latest round of 'Quick Takes,' delving into the Bryan Kohberger plea bargain, another round in President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's spate, and the online debate after video surfaces of Democrat New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his hands. Story #2: Former Chief Counsel For The House Judiciary Committee, Julian Epstein, joins Will to break down the future of the Democrat Party as they continue to head to the radical fringes of politics with Mamdani and how the two-party system is likely to reshape itself over the next decade.  Story #3: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! Will and The Crew ask if Bonilla made the right choice when deferring his Mets' salary to 2011 and beyond. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to 'Will Cain Country' on YouTube here: Watch Will Cain Country! Follow Will on X: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One, Trump versus Musk. Round two. Brian Koberger pleads guilty to mass murder. And New York City mayoral candidate, Zoran Mamdani, eats rice with his fingers. Quick takes. Two, what's the future for Democrats? Is it, in fact, a mayoral candidate who eats rice with his fingers with former White House counsel under Democrats, Julian Epstein. Three, happy Bobby Bonilla Day.

In 2001, Bobby Bonilla of the New York Mets turned down $5.9 million in lump sum in order to take $1.2 million every year from 2011 to 2035. Was it a good deal? Which adds up to more money? It is Wilcane Country streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page. Hit subscribe, set a reminder on YouTube, and drop into the comments section, and you are a member of the Wallitia. Terrestrial radio, three dozen markets across this great United States of America, and welcoming in today, BVBN in Buffalo, New York. Welcome to the Will Cain show. Welcome to Wilcane Country.

If it ever doesn't fit your schedule, you can head over to Spotify or Apple and hit subscribe. Here's the deal. Time value of money. You've often heard it said, if you won the lotto, what would you take? Would you take the annual payments or would you take the lump sum? We've all learned. think that you should always take the lump sum. Why? Compound interest. Investment opportunity. Don't let the state amortize that payment over time. You take it and be wise.

Invest your money and it will add up to more over the long period than the forced fiscal restraint, the budgeting of the state paying you out on that lotto on an annual basis. But in 2001, Bobby Bonilla of the New York Mets chose the opposite. Offered five point million in lump sum by the Mets, he instead took $1.2 million adjusted for inflation every year from 2011 to 2035. He gets that payment every July 1st. Happy Bobby Bonilla Day. Now here's to your inner finance expert. Was that a good deal for Bonilla? Every year we celebrate another $1.2 million for Bobby, but should he have taken the 5.9? I'm going to break it down here on Bonilla Day with you.

We've got a fun show for you. We're glad to have you. We welcome in Buffalo, and we want to get started with story number one. Quick take, three stories caught my attention. As we launch into this Tuesday, it is Musk Trump, round two. as the United States Senate embarks on a vote arama setting a record at voting on 45 amendments

to the one big beautiful bill for the record I like the name voterama in the whole convention of naming things and giving them tags like everything has to be a gate deflate gate water gate or everything's a bowl

you know super bowl derivatives of Super Bowl I don't think we're using arama enough. There's something fun about an orama. You know, a voterama is not fun, but you call it a voterrama, and it sounds like all of a sudden you're at the carnival. Hey, where's the tilt to whirl?

I want to go on record is I want more aramas, more aramas and everything. And I'm going to look for opportunities for us to have, if not voteramas, you know, drink aramas, something. We need more aramas. But the Senate is voting on things like, whether or not to do away with the AI moratorium on state and local governments trying to regulate artificial intelligence. On the one big beautiful bill, they wanted that to be the province exclusively of the federal government.

That's one of the 45 votes they've now stripped. They're worried as they continue to tweak this, how far away it lurches, veers from the framework presented by the House of Representatives because once the sentence done with their voterama, they send it back over to the house and we're all back in this debate again. What will the fiscal hawks? What will the Freedom Caucus do? When they look at the debt increase,

the increase in the debt ceiling, well, they have one person telling them exactly what they should do, and that is Elon Musk, who went to X and said the following. Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame, and they will lose their primary next year. this is the last thing I do on earth.

Whoa. In one of these, he specifically tagged Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, who is a stalwart member of the Freedom Caucus and a deficit and debt hawk in the house. He's also said as of today that he will be backing in any primary challenge. Thomas Massey, Congressman from Kentucky, he also posted, if this insane spending bill passes, American Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican Uniparty, so that people actually have a voice, threatening not just primary challenges, but a brand new party, the America

party. Now, to that, Donald Trump posted, Elon Musk knew long before he so strongly endorsed me for president that I was strongly against the EV mandate. It is ridiculous and was always a major point. part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history by far. And without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.

No more rocket launches, satellites, or electric car production. And our country would save a fortune. Perhaps we should have Doge take a look, a good, hard look at this. Big money to be saved. threats of primary challenges, threats of third parties, threats of seeking doge onto Elon Musk, threats of ending subsidies, threats over motivations. What's driving Elon Musk? Is he truly a deficit hawk?

Is he concerned about the fiscal future of the United States, or is he concerned about the subsidies for SpaceX and for Tesla? Let's dive into the Vodorama for just one moment. I've been wanting to share this with you because I find it absolutely fascinating. Of course, I believe that we should be doing a better job of balancing the budget, that we shouldn't be racking up annual deficits, adding up to tens of trillions of dollars in debt that seems unsustainable. I also understand that not everybody in the United States House of Representatives is Chip Roy.

There are Republicans in the great state of New York that want to protect their salt deduction, state and local tax deductions, which adds to the deficit fewer people paying into taxes and does shift some of the burden to states where they don't have high local state and taxes. Very, very, very, very, very strong argument. You should be subsidizing bad government and liberal states. And the York spends as much as Florida and gets much worse for its services.

There are fights about rural hospitals and Medicaid. I've talked to you about this and I find this absolutely fascinating. You want to learn a little something about the way this works and you probably already know. The Medicaid provider tax, what a game, what a scam. So the way this works is states tell hospitals to raise their hospital rates because the state is going to charge an extra tax on the hospitals. So we're going to charge you a 3% or 4% tax, 5%, 6%, 7% tax. You go ahead and raise your rates, but then you're going to pass that on to the federal government

in terms of reimbursements from Medicaid. and that way you'll may be it whole on our taxes. You'll get more from the feds. Who loses in this entire thing is prices rise. Hospitals will do fine. The state will get extra revenue as you offload it onto the federal taxpayer as you get a higher recoupment from Medicaid.

And Medicaid becomes this thing. It was never intended. This is what I wanted to share with you. Because much of the fight is about Medicaid. Even Republican centers like Josh Holly are concerned. I don't want to cut Medicaid. I don't want to cut Medicaid. do anything that kicks rural or poor people out of health care.

And Democrats, of course, will demacog about this. There are others who say, look, Medicaid was never intended to be this thing where 25% of the population, 20% of the population is on Medicaid. It's for the poor. That's who it's for. It's not for somebody. So we want to put work requirements on it. You got to work 80 hours a month, 20 hours a week.

You can't sit at home and do nothing and just get Medicare. Medicaid. Well, this is what's happened to Medicaid. I just want you to know this since the Affordable Care Act. Since Obamacare. 41 states, 41 have expanded Medicaid to 138% of the federal poverty level. So you can be making up to 138% of the federal poverty level and still qualify for Medicaid. That's added 20 million people to the Medicaid rolls, which is about a quarter of everyone on Medicaid. It's expanded since Obamacare by a whole new one quarter of population. By 2023, 94 million Americans were on Medicaid. In 2020, by the way, there was only 65 million Americans on Medicaid. It should be said since the pandemic, it's gone back down to 79 million Americans on Medicaid. But that represents roughly 21% of our population is on the government health care designed for the poorest among us. it is a welfare program.

So one fifth of Americans are now on a welfare program. You go, what was that like? Well, here's a little timeline. In 66, when it was started 5%, showing some reflection of its intention, right? 5%.

How many people are truly indigent, truly poor, truly can't get their own health care? Is it 1 in 5? By 1975, it was up to 9%. By 85, it was up to 12%. By 95, it was up to 12%. By 95, it was.

was up to 15%. And I just told you, by 2023, it was 94 million Americans representing almost 25%. It's come down for about at 21%. And what it's worth, state by state, you want to know what that looks like? Because it gets pretty stark. The highest state in New Mexico, 33% of their population on Medicaid. California, 32%. Alaska, 33%. Louisiana, 32%. Missouri, I looked it up, 17 to 22 percent, somewhere in that range. Why? Because Republican Senator Josh Hawley is against cuts to Medicaid. And you say, whoa, a Republican.

Well, because here's the thing about government spending. It's like heroin. Once you start, you can't stop. Once you inject this into the veins of America, how do you ever get off the addiction of government spending? and you look up one day some 50 years later after the advent of this program for the poor and politicians have to keep it in order to get votes well it's because Americans by the way as well are getting it and you don't want to lose your services Elon Musk has a point but so does Donald Trump because government is compromised and you have to get this through and I still don't know

even at these levels how they're going to get it through how are you going to get freedom caucus fiscal hawks on the same page as northern blue state Republicans? I don't know. And is it bad for our debt and deficit? In the end, I don't know Elon Musk's motivations. Is it about subsidies? Is it because he's truly a true believer in the fiscal future of America? But here we are. Round two, Trump, Trump, and here's what Donald Trump said about Elon Musk. I don't know. We might have to take a look. We might have to put Doge on Elon.

You know, Doge is? Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies, Peter. One of these things about these two guys is when they fight, they don't wear gloves. This stuff is bare-knuckle. Story two, Brian Coburger has pled guilty to murdering four students. at the University of Idaho.

That trial scheduled for August will now not take place. In order to accomplish that plea, the prosecutors took off the table, the death penalty. Presumably now he'll spend the rest of his life in prison while admitting guilt to the murders of four students, and that is not sitting well with some of the victims, families of this murder. Here's what they had to say about murderer, Brian Coburger. One of the victims' families, Kaylee Gonzalez, appears to be very outraged by this plea deal. I want to take a minute and read a portion of their statement regarding this deal. They say in part the LATA County should be ashamed of its prosecutor's office.

Four wonderful young people lost their lives, yet the victim's families were treated as opponents from the outset. We weren't even called about the plea. We received an email with a letter attached. That's how Lata County's Prosecutor's Office treats murder victims' families. The investigation revealed through phone pinging. Coburger's whereabouts, his presence around the house, the night of the murders. He was in the house, it seems like, roughly for a little over 30 minutes. But the murder started within minutes of him being noticed in the house at 4 a.m.

The surviving roommate said somebody's in the house, started hearing sounds by 407 a.m. He was out of the house. He was back in Pullman, Washington, according to his phone pings, by about 5.30 a.m. they use familial DNA through such sources as 23 and me, meaning they had DNA at the scene, but of course, Coburger's DNA wasn't on file, but you can go to 23 and me, and if any of your relatives have ever done the results,

your DNA's out there, and they can reduce it down to a pool of people who match that DNA, then who's in the vicinity, who's in the geographic area, then the foam ping, and boom, before you know it, there you go. That was going to be a huge issue in this case, the constitutionality of that evidence collection. Now, no, as he pleads guilty, but avoids the death penalty.

And then, quick takes, story three. New York City. Democrat mayor, candidate. Zoran Mamdani? Well, he's out there saying he's a socialist. He's Muslim. He's third world. And he's four Palestinians.

And that was all asked while he sat on a park bench and ate rice with his fingers. Listen. So the third holy grail of taboos in American politics, you have socialism, you have Islam, and then you have Palestine, and you are really going for the trifecta. Let's go, baby. Let's go. Tell me, why is Palestine a part of your politics? There he is, while this question is being asked, scooping up rice with his fingers and shoving it into his mouth, sticking all over his fingers.

And that led to a debate, Congressman Brandon Gill, who's going to be on the Will Kane show on Fox News Channel, he did take to X and he said, get real. You know, if you're going to move to Western civilization, adopt civilizational manners. If you want to live in the third world, live in the third world. Setting aside you, many people are like, we eat pizza, we eat hamburgers, yeah, yeah, we eat tacos with our hands. True, true. Can we just say, without even much intellectual analysis, we can say, it's different? scooping up rice with your fingers and shove it into your mouth i mean can we all just agree like i don't you want to get it intellectual about this you want to do some kind of cultural this and that

like rice sticking up all over your fingers as you shove your fingers into your mouth rice is a utensil food i'm having trouble with the chopsticks when i show up and try to eat the rice but i've gotten decent at it just use the chopsticks like a spoon you know spread it as far until it doesn't fall through the middle scoop it up into your mouth i do that i i don't i don't ask for a fork or a at the Japanese or Chinese or Thai restaurant. I'll use the chopsticks, but I'm not using my fingers. But even more than the, like, whatever, civilizational debate, can we just all agree?

This is like watching, maybe he's talented. You know, maybe he's actually the theater kid who got an A. I mean, he's still in the D-List actor stage of being a, you know, political performer. But maybe he's pretty good. I don't know at this point. Zoran Mamdani was born in Uganda his mother's Indian, his father I can't remember

but he moved to Uganda, moved from Uganda quickly to South Africa. He lived in South Africa one of his parents is a professor I believe the other is also not blue collar lived in South Africa to the age of seven then moved to America

I find it pretty hard to believe you know, that he has maintained the third world customs while growing up in the United States of America. I think this entire thing is cheap performance. Maybe he believes it, maybe he doesn't. But as we talked about yesterday with the New York Post, Carol Markowitz, listen to a guy like Mamdani, maybe performing, but say things, which there's video out there of him saying,

we need to seize the means of production as a self-described democrat socialist tax rich and white people more create a government option on grocery stores listen to him because you want to argue about whether or not he should be eating rice with his fingers you want to argue about whether or not you know whatever his religious views may be one thing that he is making very clear to all He's not a big believer in the success and the perpetuation of Western civilization. He does not believe the systems, the culture, the province of a successful project for over 250 years in the United States of America and longer in Europe. This isn't radical because he's not a traditional Republican or Democrat.

This is radical because he doesn't buy into the fabric underneath our politics. He doesn't even buy in to the idea. of America. And don't let him tell you all I do, but this is part of it, my freedom to think differently. That is a wife who says, I love my husband, I just want to change everything about him. Do you love America and everything that it was built upon and it stands for? Or do you want to change it into something radically different? I think we know the answer from Zoran Mamdani. Now the real question is, is he representative, though, of the entire future for Democrats? We're On that by, former White House counsel, Julian Epstein, coming up on Wilcane Country.

Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise $6.5 million. Visit go. Fox forward slash TX flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy host of the Trey Gowdy podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. I doork out on the Supreme Court of the United States. I love it.

I did go to law school and I loved my education in law school. I learned more in those three years than I did. in all the years before that, both college, high school, formal education. It's because I love the United States Constitution. I love the history. I love the opinions of the Supreme Court justices. And the whole idea, the whole prism is, do they have an ideology of the coherent worldview,

or are they just political hacks? We have some new evidence when it comes to Justice Elena Kagan. It is Will Kane Country, streaming live at foxnews.com. On the Fox News YouTube channel, on the Fox News Facebook page, we hope you hit subscribe if you're listening on a radio at Spotify or Apple, and that way you can hang out with this whenever you like. Julian Epstein, a friend of the program, he's been here a lot. He is also a former White House counsel,

and chief counsel for the Judiciary Committee, not at the White House, but at the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, a Democrat, at least in his past, and I think still self-describes as a man of the left. I think so. Maybe still a Democrat, but maybe not what they are. are today. What do you think then? I'm curious. I'm curious, Julian, not just what they are today, but what they will be tomorrow. What do you think about Zoran Mamdani as a future,

like standard bearer for Democrats? Interesting segue. I would describe myself for the first part of your question as a Democrat from the 1990s. The Democrats in the 1990s, they were for balanced budgets. They were for ending welfare as we know it. They took a position that is actually to the right of the position that President Trump and the Republicans are taking today. They were for secure borders. They were not for racist socialism. They were in many ways where Trump and the Republicans are today, which makes the point that Trump is very effectively occupying the political center. As for where the Democrats are today, Will, with Mandami, you know, the Democrats took a trouncing in November, and right now some of their leaders are registering at 17% approval.

So what is the Mandami answer? The Mandami answer is more big government controlling your life, which the public doesn't like. We know that. And an embrace of a neo-Nazi movement led by a terrorist group called Hamas, which is masquerading as a liberation movement, that Mandami can't find himself to be able to denounce. And this is something that is going to be, this is going to be a weight that's going to be hung on the necks of Democrats everywhere. This is a disaster for Democrats.

A disaster they're courting. It's a weight they're putting on willingly around their neck like a piece of flashy jewelry. Chuck Schumer has spoke glowingly of Zaron Mamdani. Chris Murphy, Senator, just recently said he may be paving the new path for us when it comes to Democrats. So they are putting this weight around their own necks now, Julian, leading to the question, which I've begun to have on a more ongoing basis about what is the future for Democrats. But I actually think this is a bigger question because if Democrats repositioned along the lines of Mamdani, in my mind, Julian, they make themselves irrelevant in the future of America.

But let's explore that for just a moment. And then we're going to get to the separate part of this conversation. Listening to you talk, Mom Doni, though, does represent a global left. He doesn't represent any historical vision of the left in America. But he does represent a left that you would find, not just in third world countries across the world. Because he points out, if you come from a third world country,

you have a different prism through which you see the issue of Palestine, Palestinians. But I'm talking to even more about Europe. this social democrat stuff he is a European leftist now you and I should talk about what that means for the future of America I say this humbly because I remember in 2012 pundits on MSNBC saying that the Republican Party had relegated themselves to white males in the South and it was a permanent minority status party and of course that blew up spectacularly in their face so I don't sit here today and say Democrats are relegating themselves to permanent minority status in irrelevance, but I do tend to think if they go down the path

of a Mamdani of an AOC, they are courting irrelevance. I think they are making themselves a regional party of coastal elites. The animating idea behind the Mandami Global Left Movement is an anti-Western ideology that understands the world through oppressor and oppressed. And they have this sort of delusionary idea from which they get a sugar hide from, that they are sort of liberating the oppressed. The problem with that will is that most people understand that for all their anti-Western civilization rhetoric, Western civilization has done more to uplift the economic well-being of billions of people and to promote individual liberty. since World War II than any civilization ever, ever.

No civilization comes close. And so what you have, I think, with the Mandami movement and the global left are these sort of privileged, mostly white, college-educated millennials and Gen Ziers who want to moralize how bad, moralize about how bad their parents' generation was while taking handouts from that generation in the form of greater government welfare. And it's sort of the height of decadence and civilizational decay.

This is beyond politics. This is culture. And I think a lot of this is coming out from the universities, which are teaching this kind of anti-Western ideology. And it's not being questioned by the news media because we know we could run through all of these ideas about free buses and rent control and all these things you've heard. We know one thing about them, that all of the evidence shows that none of these things work. And the media has not been asking those questions. So the media has been falling down on its job. Universities have been

falling down on this job. I think this is a crisis of Western civilization. Let me just give you another way of looking at this. And I know some people are going to think this is a controversial thing to say. But what is it that the Nazis did in the 1930s in Germany? What are the two things that the Nazis did in 1930s, Germany? The first thing is, was government control of the private sector, command and control economy. Nazi actually stands for the National Socialist Party of Germany. So the first thing they did was government control of the economy. The second thing they did was to scapegoat Jews.

Now, I'm not saying the Progressive Socialist Party has gone all in on Nazism, but they are flirting with it, because it is exactly the two things that they are doing. Mandami, for the Democrats, is the Charlottesville moment. What happened, what is the thing that Joe Biden said that drove him to run? It was Charlottesville. He said President Trump failed to denounce the racial white supremacists in Charlottesville, when in fact he did denounce. that. The media misreported that. The whole thing was a smear of President Trump. But from river to sea is the modern day equivalent of a Nazi salute. And if the Democrats can't distance themselves or denounce that kind of neo-Nazism, then I think it's the beginning of the end of the

party. I mean, we saw from the Pew data the other day that Jews are moving in big numbers towards the Republican Party as part of a big realignment that's going on. And so I think, and you see other groups doing that as well. Almost every other group moved, pretty much every group moved towards the Republicans. And so what I think you see is this capture by this moralizing, self-indulgent, white college-educated elite in the United States and in the West that is driving away most voters. and the reason that I think it's a suicide march for the party is and one of the causes of the suicide march is that we have weak leaders. You know, I think Schumer and the rest of the leadership have become very small in this moment.

I mean, here is a moment for the Democratic leaders to stand up, like they demanded Republicans stand up during Charlottesville. and say, we reject the neo-Nazi move, the neo-Nazi wing, the neo-Nazi embrace of the democratic socialists, and because that is what they are doing. They are embracing a Nazi movement that is masquerading as a liberation movement. I think the second part of this is interesting, Julian, is if the left does reduce itself, in your words, to a regional minority, somewhat irrelevant on a national stage, well the entire system in america is built upon a two-party system we're not a parliamentary system as in europe we're not going to have factionalized groups of political parties fighting

over smaller pieces of the pie we're built to be a two-party system and you'll have some oppositional rise like if it isn't going to be what we currently know of as democrats it's interesting to ask what will it be and i do think the maga coalition is largely held together through the charisma of one man, Donald Trump. I think there's a couple of issues where we see the fractures already. One we illustrated today with the fight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, perhaps even on simple budgetary issues, debt and deficit. But we saw over the course of the war between Iran and Israel,

also a pretty big divide between interventionist or America First and then isolationist wings within Republican thought process as well. So Israel becomes a big wedge as well. Well, and I do wonder, like, post-Donald Trump, if Democrats continue to pursue insanity into irrelevance, what is your opposition party? Do you end up with a divide somewhere on the right that becomes actually your two primary parties vying for president in the United States? Well, I would like to see the Democratic Party return to the centristism of the 90s, and I think it could then be a competitive party. That's what I would like to see. And we can't put that beyond the realm of possibility.

But you don't see it happening, but I do want to once again recognize my humility in learning the predictions from 2012 about permanent minority status for Republicans. Anything can happen. A charismatic figure can come along on the left, push all these whack-a-doodles to the side. It just doesn't look like they're headed in that direction at all today. I'll give you my theory as to why that's not possible. During COVID, we sent hundreds of billions of dollars into the states to give them slush funds. And what the states did was, particularly in blue states, was they hired, you know, tens if not hundreds of thousands of what I call the shadow government, NGOs, service agencies. You know, half of the jobs that were created under the Biden administration were government-adjacent jobs.

And what has happened with not just the COVID slush fund that went out, but the NGOs, the activist groups, these folks have essentially become the shadow government of the Democratic Party. They control the Democratic Party. They intimidate the leaders like Schumer and Jeffries. And their entire philosophy is this oppressor, oppressed, this idea, this framing from which they are the liberators. If that goes out the window, they're not selling anything. it would require a massive change in the democratic infrastructure in the shadow government and it would require an entirely new class of people to come in and sort of operate in that space and i don't see that happening so i see the democrats is having to make an existential choice

about whether they're going to return to the common-sense centrism of clinton or go down this road where half of the party is too scared and too meek to stand up for basic things like standing up against a Nazi movement led by Hamas, or more government welfare and socialism. And if it takes that ladder, which I think it's taking, it will not only scare off a big segment of voters and I think ensure a Republican working majority for the foreseeable future,

but I think a lot of the Democratic members of Congress, the centrist, their heart isn't in it. Their heart certainly isn't in a Mondami candidacy, And their heart is not in sort of the leftward drift of the party. So it becomes a hobbled party, not just in terms of its appeal to voters, but internally. It becomes a party where you see increasing resentment, increasing dysfunction. And that is the smallness of the leadership of Jeffries and Schumer. We'll be right back on Will Kane Country.

Fox News Audio presents Unsolved with James Patterson. Every crime tells a story. But some stories are left unfinished. Somebody knows. Real cases. Real people. Listen and follow now at Foxcrucrime.com. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes.

We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.com. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. I mentioned this yesterday. Julian, I mentioned it a moment ago.

You know, I didn't go into law school with the mind. mindset of somebody who leaned to the right. I wasn't a quote unquote conservative. I might have said I was a libertarian. I don't know. I didn't know. I was 22 years old. I went into law school. I started studying. I studied the Constitution. I read judicial opinions. I understood the points of view of various justices. And I was very attracted to some and their logic and their reason and very turned off by others. And I developed a worldview largely through the prison of the Constitution and how you read law, how you reason? And I think that this is the type of thing that pushed me away from ever becoming someone who saw the Constitution as a living, breathing document, or who could ever see

things through the lens of the left. This is Justice Elena Kagan, who just this last week released opinion where she was in the dissent saying, hey, you got to allow district judges to issue these nationwide injunctions. That was the issue of the week. Trump won on Friday. The Supreme Court by a 63 vote said, no. District judge. judges cannot enjoin the executive nationwide. It's limited to the parties before the court. But it wasn't that long ago that Kagan was saying things just like what was written in the majority opinion, which she disagreed with in writing or participating in signing on to

the dissent. Here is before Justice Elena Kagan. That can't be right. That one district court, whether it's in, you know, in the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California. And in the Biden years, they go to Texas. And it just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks

and leave its stop for the years that it takes to go through normal process. That is Justice Kagan in 2022 by 2025. She's writing the opposite from what you just heard right there. And this is what turned me off, Julian. I saw justices make decisions. decisions that were inconsistent, but consistently in pursuit of their political aims. And I felt like those justices were the ones, quite honestly, in political parlance on the left.

Well, you're rightly turned off, Will, because that kind of opportunism is cynical and it's nihilistic. And I respect the fact that, you know, you can accept a liberal or progressive so long as they're sincere and that they hold sort of neutral principles. sincerely believe it. But I believe in those principles. But it's not just Kagan, who said that. The Biden administration filed a brief will in 2024 opposing universal injunctions. Democrats universally opposed universal injunctions when Republican appointed judges enjoined the Biden administration on immigration, on the abortion pill, on Obamacare expansion. They universally opposed in universal injunctions at this point. So what I think you see is, you know,

you use the word hackery or ax on the left. I think this is a form of intellectual nihilism. That again... I like that word. I think that's accurate. You've used it twice. Nialism is accurate. You believe in nothing.

It is because you don't believe in anything other than your own power. And the advance of your issues, And your issues are all driven by, again, this oppressor-oppressed worldview, which is such a distorted worldview, which only, you know, Thomas Sol always uses the line. Some ideas are so absurd that only intellectuals can believe them. And I think he was quoting George Orwell. But it's only a view that's held by elites. I mean, people, you go into the supposed people that they say they're representing.

You go into black communities, brown communities, other communities that are quote-unquote marginalized. And none of the polling shows that they agree with this sort of anti-Western worldview. So this is a very self-serving worldview by the elites. They believe it increases their social capital, their social credit scores. It all goes back to this theory that there's an overproduction of elites and they have to find them ways of distinguishing themselves amongst fellow leftist elites. So they sort of moralize about every issue. it's this oppression Olympics. And it's what drives this nihilism.

So nothing matters other than their ability to say, we are the vanguard of some liberation movement that only our fellow elites recognize, but no one else in the country recognizes. And that is fundamentally why the Democratic Party has moved to a position where I think they are culturally, intellectually, politically out of touch with the mainstream. Okay, then what do you think, Julian,

since you're such a deep thinker on these things, What do you think is going to be the future of MAGA after Donald Trump? I don't. I mean, it's funny that you as a conservative that are troubled by it, and I'm not, because I don't see fundamental philosophical divisions. I mean, I see limited government. I see equal opportunity, not equal results. I see gender sanity. all of the data on pediatric gender transitions is showing is probably creating more harm than

any conceivable benefit. I see secure borders. And on the whole Israel issue, the sort of isolationist right took this view that it was going to be another Afghanistan and another Iraq. And it's like they weren't paying attention. Nobody was talking about troops on the ground. And for those that say we didn't have an interest, I think that's insanity.

I mean, you prevented another potential Holocaust of Jews in Israel, which is both a moral and a strategic win. You prevented nuclear blackmail by a Nazi regime, Iran, against the United States. They could deliver an ICBM within 10 minutes. And most importantly, what you've done is you've driven, if not, you've disabled, if not destroyed the axis of oppression. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. Iran. All of these parties were sort of driven out by this debate, and you've opened up the opportunity for a pro-West, pro-modernism, access of progress in the mid-east that could involve, you know, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and many others who don't want to go to the sort of the, this sort of ancient, Islamic redemptive religiously extremist vision that Iran has of returning a caliphate from the, you know, the seventh century. Most of the, most of the secular Arab states reject that.

What this has done is it's opened the door for a pro-Western realignment in the mid-East. What could be more American than that? And so I think sort of the isolationists, I don't know what they were reading. I don't know what they were understanding. This is very much an American-first policy on the part of Trump. And I'll tell you what else on this, Will, is you are seeing a migration towards the GOP from centrists, from security-minded former Democrats, national security-minded former Democrats, Jewish Democrats, Jews have always voted Democrat. They're moving now in big numbers towards Republicans. So politically, I think the most important thing has been the moral on the national security question.

But politically, this has also been beneficial. So I don't, for a minute, get the isolationist. I don't get what they're thinking is other than this sort of, you know, this bedwetting panic. And I think they have been exposed as blind on this. And, you know, I've said it before. I think if this works out the way it may work out in the Mideast with Israel being triumphant, Iran being knocked out of the game, of course, we have to watch what's going to happen with Turkey now. But I think if this is successful, it's worthy of a Nobel Prize on the part of Trump.

I agree with that. I mean, it's amazing to me that the media is, I mean, not to jump from issue to issue, but look what happened in Rwanda with a peace agreement in Rwanda. I mean, Clinton, I think, would say his biggest regret was he didn't intervene in 94 during the Wandaan genocide, where he had a million Rwandans that were massacred with the Hutus and the Tutsis. And this conflict with Congo was a leftover from that. And Trump got in, as he did with Pakistan and India early, and has prevented another conflict from spiraling out of control. I mean, these are huge things that occurred.

India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, Rwanda, Congo. These are huge, huge, huge things that happened on the global scene that the president, you know, I say this is a Democrat, maybe a dissident Democrat. President Trump deserves just a huge amount of credit for. Yeah, always fascinating, really, really enlightening. I love the conversation, as always. Julian Epstein, thank you so much, man. Well, I really enjoyed coming on with you. All right.

We'll see again next time then. There he goes. Julian Epstein. And I misattributed his past to the White House, but Julian in the past was the chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Democrats in the past, an attorney. And I do love having him here on Wilking Country.

If I offered you five, $5.9 million, and then in the alternative, I offered you something like $21 consecutive payments of $1.2 million, but you got the $5.9 million some, I don't know, decade before, which is the better deal? Like if you invested both, would you rather have the lump sum like in the lottery? Would you rather have the payouts like Bobby Bonilla? Happy Bobby Bonilla day. I answer. next on Will Cain Country. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy.

Make sure to check out my podcast. Kennedy saves the world. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at Fox Newspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. asked people on the streets of New York City to play along.

Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at the quiz. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz. tinfoil pat in florida justin's running the show from new york and two days is in dallas but not with me look at him right there on the set what's my studio what's up i'm in the host seat right now in the will can show look at me feels good looking good yeah looks good yeah it's good sitting in my chair look at you you you could you could be the you this could all be the dan overlock show welcome to

Overlock country. Big shoes to fill, buddy. Two days, country. Big Luke Casey's to fill, I should say. Listen to that voice. I mean, if that's not a voice that's threatened my job. He's sitting in my seat on my set with that voice. I feel myself shrinking.

Happy Bobby Bonilla Day. So every year, July 1st, this has been celebrated. Bobby Bonilla receives a $1.2 million payout from the New York Mets. I believe the payment started in 2011, and they go through 2035. I believe there's an 8% adjustment, so he is beating inflation. You know, I think it will go up. I think that it's adjusted 8% on an annual basis. And it got me wondering, because we all celebrated like, he fleeced the Mets.

Look what he did. I'm like, did he? I just want to see the numbers, because it's awesome when you think about another 1.2 for Bobby Bonilla. but did he the deal was in 2001 the Mets offered Bini of five or he was scheduled to receive a 5.9 million dollar lump sum payment in 2001 and instead they proposed this to him now do you want to know why they proposed this to him it's pretty interesting Mets then owner Tom I think it was Wilpon, um, was in business with Bernie made off. And, um, two days. I don't mind Tiger and the guys in the studio doing a little work, but they got to be careful because their,

their voices are now broadcasting here on Wilcane country. Um, so pipe down, Tiger. Um, that's my guy working on the studios there at the Wilcane show. in the background of two a day's set. So they were involved in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. They were making a ton of money with Bernie Madoff or thought they would, and that was the projections they were getting from Madoff, so they were like, well, we're going to make more on this money. If we keep it now, and by the time we're paying Bob Benia,

we will have received more in returns from Madoff than we will have to pay out to Bonaia. Time value of money, opportunity cost. You know what I'm saying? We got the money now. Money now is worth more than money later. And it's because of what you can do with that money. with opportunity costs, and they thought, we're doing great with Bernie Madoff.

Now, it didn't work out that way for the Will Pons. It didn't work out that way for the Mets. We all know it was a Ponzi scheme. They didn't get those returns from Madoff. But still the question remains. We've all played this game. If you won the lotto, do you take the annual payment,

or do you take the lump sum? And the lump sum is way cut down. You want a $300 million loto? I think you're lump sum after taxes and everything. I'm just spitball in here, but it's less than $100 million, right? Yeah, under, definitely under half. Yeah, yeah, agreed.

And we've all learned, right? Haven't we all learned? You take the lump sum regardless. Even though it hurts and you're not getting 300, you take the lump sum. Because you have the money. And you get to invest it. And the state's not going to give you a good return on that kind of stuff.

And so they're just going to stretch it out over time. So I got to thinking, well, should Bonilla just have taken the 5.9 up front? Okay. And have we just been celebrating this? this in media every year because, oh, it's cool to get a check for 20 years. And I see you already nodding and shaking your head tinfoil. Have you done this? Have you done the financial analysis on this? Yes. Did Bonilla do the right thing? No. You got me thinking when you said, did he make a mistake? And I'm like, what do you mean? Why did you make it? Yes, compound interest

is a whole big thing. He missed out five years of compound interest. So by the end, if he had kept more, right, more, 10 years, right? A decade, a decade, 10 years. If he had kept the original bonus and invested it at 8%, he would have $87.23 million by 2035. Well, okay, time out, because we've got competing math going on here, okay? So I did it as well. Okay, you take, and I used AI to help me out, you take the 5.9 in 2001, right? And I said, give me average market returns. And AI said, well, the stock market annually returns on average 10%,

but let's be harder on ourselves. And they said 7%. The AI said, we're going to annualize a 7% compound interest for Bonilla starting in 01. And this has to presume he's going to invest all of it in both scenarios. he's not spending it it's the only way we can do apples to apples right so he takes that and what i got i'm going to have to mess up my background screen here for a minute because i took a screenshot of what i got patrick is the following if he had done that okay this is like a tic-tok you can see it in the background um initial investment of 5.9 million in 2001 annualized return of 7% in the

S&P 500 average over a period of 34 years because his payouts go till 2035 right that's when he'll be paid in full in his contract i got final value 59 million dollars he would end up with 59 million now that's a lot of money now you have to kind of normalize this so we have to say the same thing but if you take 1.2 million dollars over a period from 2011 to 2035 and invest that every year. Of course, that's staged out over time, right? You're not going to invest all of the money. It's 1.2 each year. Same thing. Invest at all at a rate of 7%. The Mets payout in total is just under 30 million. It's 29.8 million. So he's going to get 29.8. That's kind of the debate. Would you rather have 29.8 over a period of what ended up being 34 years,

or would you rather have 5.9 34 years earlier? And the answer is, you still do the Mets deal. Because if you're investing that every year, at the end, he'll end up with $75.5 million. True. Versus to $59. And, by the way, less risk. Because he's staging it out, it's guaranteed payments of a certain amount. He's not subject to the same level of market fluctuations over that time.

So I don't know where you got the $80-something million. If you got $80 million, then it's a closer call. Although you still have to factor in risk. But he made the right call. He ended up with 20 million. The key is just not a little under 20 million more. I got 8% return instead of 7% return. So that's the difference in compound interest.

Just 1% can change drastically. Wow. Right. Over 35 years, 1%. That is, that's it. Go ahead, 2 days. No, the only thing you have to do is just not overspent. just don't overspend on what you're taking in because that's like you said with the lottery

if you're you know if you're getting basically a salary for doing nothing then just don't overspend that you're taking in and they'll be good you know because that's when people buy these houses and buy these cars they pay taxes and just gets ridiculous did you yeah it's forced fiscal restraint when you interviewed j leno did did he talk about when he um he saved all of his checks from The Night Show, like $25 million a year, and he actually just lived off of his trap. Like, he would go do shows on the weekends, and he would live off of that, and then he just banked everything that he earned on the night show over, I mean, he's got to be, you know, super wealthy now. Well, the other thing that Leno or Bonilla could do is they could do the same

thing of Malik Beasley of the Detroit Pistons. Malik Beasley, of the Detroit Pistons. Malik Beasley, the Detroit Pistons is under investigation by the feds because in the new world of gambling and sports, he is accused, he's being investigated, he's not charged of point shaving. He, the accusation is that on a lot of prop bets, so the one they gave an example of is Malik Beasley, two and a half rebounds, and then it had a lot of movement in the betting right before, and he went over, he got six rebounds, and was he working the prop bets while playing NBA basketball. And I don't know.

Let's just say for a minute that Malik Beasley, this is all allegations. But, you know, he played well this year. How much, like on a risk-reward analysis could he have been betting to pay off to jeopardize his NBA contracts, which, by the way, the NBA's contracts is insane right now. You know, guys are opting out.

Who has it just opted out? Dorian Finney Smith, who's a good player, a starter, but not a star for the Lakers. He just opted out of his player option to pay him $15 million. So he feels like he's going to go make more than $15 million a year on the open market. I'm sure he is.

I'm sure he got good advice. There have been guys that made mistakes on that. But how much could he have been making him betting to jeopardize that kind of salary and contract he could get for just playing basketball? But for me, it also illustrates this world of the Wild West we're in sports because of gambling. And this comes the same day, by the way, that college sports are scheduled to start implementing their $20.5 million salary cap to pay directly to athletes. This morning, I was on radio in Buffalo with our friend, David Belavilla, talking a minute about this.

Every day we get a new story that whatever we grew up with, whatever you thought of when it comes. to sports and we focus often on college but pro as well is changing under your feet and as Beasley story shows what gambling is only beginning to do to sports and it's going to do it in every way possible teams opening up books inside of stadiums active betting while you're watching games in states that will allow it maybe replacing eventually television as the primary revenue driver and stream for sports. It's all changing. Our children are going to see sports professional and college through a completely different lens that we don't know. We don't know what it'll be, but we just know it's going to be way, way different than whatever we grew up with.

And I'm not sure it's going to be better. The future isn't always a bigger, better version of the present. But we hopefully will, hopefully, we will. will be on Wilcane Country. All right, that's going to do it for us today. Subscribe at Spotify or Apple. Set the reminder on YouTube or Facebook. Come back, hang out with this again tomorrow. And we will see you again next time.

Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free, on the Amazon music app. This is Jimmy Phala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding, it's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com.