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Chapter 1: What recent shake-up occurred at the White House involving Mike Waltz?
And yeah, we're making fun of Elizabeth Moore and they're not Native Americans. Alrighty, so let's talk about what just happened in Washington, D.C. yesterday. So President Trump, in a shock move, decided to fire Mike Waltz, is what it looked like originally. And a bunch of people were celebrating this. Mike Waltz is the National Security Advisor, or was the national security advisor.
Obviously, Mike Waltz had been under severe fire since this signal chat screw up in which he accidentally included the Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who President Trump then gave an interview to. Again, not sure why that happened. In any case, it was a screw up. There's no question it was a screw up. The question was how long Waltz would last over at NSA.
Well, yesterday it was announced that Waltz would no longer be at NSA and cheers went up from the anti-Waltz kind of anti-traditional Republican isolationist wing of the Republican party. And then it was announced that Marco Rubio would become the temporary NSA and Waltz himself would be moved over to the role of UN ambassador, a role that originally Elise Stefanik
the congresswoman from New York, had been nominated for. But when it became clear that the Republican majority in Congress was under threat, she was sort of removed from that nomination. So Walt is moving from NSA over to the U.N. ambassador role. Rubio is now serving in four positions simultaneously.
He's the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor temporarily, the acting head of USAID, which of course is basically getting zeroed out, and the official archivist of the United States government. So he's like that kid in your third grade class who is simultaneously the... the secretary of the student government, as well as the vice president and the treasurer.
That basically appears to be what's happening with Rubio. Now, there's still a lot of questions about what happened here, because people are interpreting this as a proxy fight inside the Trump administration over the direction of foreign policy more generally. And that's absolutely credible.
It is certainly plausible that there is, in fact, an ongoing conversation slash fight inside the administration over the direction of foreign policy. We know that because we know those conversations are happening
largely from that signal chat that was originally leaked accidentally to the Atlantic, in which you had basically on one side, in favor of bombing the Houthis, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, It appeared Rubio was on that side. And then on the other side, you had Vice President J.D. Vance.
Now, obviously, the vice president and many people associated with his team, including presumably Special Envoy Steve Woodcuff, we'll get to in a moment. They have a very different view on American foreign policy. They're very much in favor of a sort of isolationist-laden foreign policy, not a Reagan-esque peace through strength. And this is an ongoing conversation inside the administration.
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Chapter 2: Why was Mike Waltz moved from National Security Advisor to UN Ambassador?
On the one hand, you have Witkoff, who is going around and attempting to cut deals, deals that, again, do not reflect sort of the traditional Trump 1.0 peace through strength approach to places like Russia or Iran. And then at the same time, you have President Trump pushing quite hard on a number of sort of pressure points for Russia and for Iran. So, for example, President Trump.
literally yesterday, was pushing more sanctions on Iran, even as he was saying a little bit earlier this week that he was going to cut a deal with Iran. Very unclear whether this is putting on more sanctions to take them off, whether these sanctions are largely targeted not at Iran, but at China, particularly because China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil at this point.
Here's President Trump just yesterday.
Iran had no money when I was president. They were out of money. They were bust. They had no money. They weren't giving it to Hamas. They weren't giving it to Hezbollah. They weren't giving it to anybody because they didn't have any money. They were just about bust. And in fact, I put sanctions on last night.
Any oil that anybody takes from Iran is not allowed to do business in the United States of America.
We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, you know, we're here in Israel for Independence Day. We talked to Mike Huckabee yesterday. Well, Independence Day fell on May 1st. For the people of Israel, however, the concept of freedom has become intertwined with their ongoing challenge. Massive fires breaking out all over the state, for example, set by terrorists.
Many people are facing difficult circumstances. They navigate their daily lives amid uncertainty. During these challenging times, it can be hard to find moments of joy and celebration. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews works to provide essential support for vulnerable populations.
ensuring the elderly, the sick, wounded soldiers, and families in need that they receive the care they deserve. Your generous gift to the fellowship today will help provide vital aid, including medicine, nutritious meals, safety measures, and comfort to those who need it most. Show your support for Israel by making a meaningful contribution. Your gift can make a real difference in someone's life.
Make your gift online today at benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. There's a lot going on here in Israel. A lot of people suffering. You can help out at benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org. God bless and thank you. Also, tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just starting.
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Chapter 3: Who is Steve Witkoff and what is his role in the Trump administration's foreign policy?
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Meanwhile, there were negotiations that were scheduled between the United States and Iran for Saturday. Apparently, that has now been rescheduled for logistical reasons. Apparently, there was never a hard date on the schedule, according to the United States. The Iranians say this is being done for logistical reasons. Oman is claiming that it was logistical in nature.
Iran is saying that what they really, really want is a deal that will allow for peaceful nuclear development, which of course is a lie. Iran does not need nuclear development at all. It's one of the most oil and natural gas rich countries on planet earth. The idea that Iran, which is an underdeveloped economy, they're not using that energy for AI. Let's put it this way.
Iran is not desperately creating nuclear facilities because they are so in hock with the green revolution. I guess not with what's happening here. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Bakhai, issued a statement describing the talks as postponed at the request of Oman's foreign minister. He said Oman remained committed to reaching a fair and lasting agreement. A U.S.
source said that America had never confirmed its participation in a fourth round of talks, but the source said the U.S. expects the talks to take place in the near future. So, again, there's a lot of sort of mixed signals coming out of the administration with regard to what an Iran deal would look like. The Washington Post, by the way, is cheering the idea of a JCPOA 2.0, an Obama deal 2.0.
Although even the Washington Post, I will say it's kind of amazing. The editorial board of the Washington Post is now free to admit that Obama's JCPOA deal was really bad, that the Iran deal in 2015 was a bad deal. Now, they still want a bad deal, the Washington Post. They just want it to be slightly less bad than the Obama deal.
Quote, the onus is now on Trump and his team to show they can negotiate a better deal, one that doesn't end up looking like the old one. Well, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and now interim national security advisor, he was on with Sean Hannity last night and he discussed what the United States' goals in the Iran talks are.
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Chapter 4: What are the current dynamics and disagreements within the Trump administration on foreign policy?
Chapter 5: What is the status and outlook of the US-Iran nuclear negotiations?
And the Trump administration is, in fact, responding to the reality, which is, as I've said, President Trump is a reality-based president. When something goes wrong, he shifts and he moves. And so the idea that he could just pressure Ukraine to the table and Russia would magically come to the table, that didn't materialize. And so President Trump is now shifting and moving.
The South Carolina Republican said in an interview support for his bill crossed the critical threshold of 60 co-sponsors on Wednesday, meaning it has enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster. By the end of the week, according to Graham, the bill will have at least 67 co-sponsors, which is enough to even override a potential presidential veto.
That list of co-sponsors is evenly divided across the aisle and includes the Senate Majority Leader John Thune. It also includes members of the Senate Republican leadership team. So unclear if it makes a floor vote, if President Trump were to oppose it. The White House is not commenting on it so far.
But again, more leverage against Russia is the thing that is going to get them to the table, not sort of the carrots and massages approaches that has been retailed by Steve Witkoff so far. In other good moves from the Trump administration, President Trump has now signed an executive order to terminate federal funding for NPR as well as PBS. That is a positive move. NPR is a disaster area.
NPR is a leftist agitprop outlet. that is paid for with American taxpayer dollars. There's no reason that NPR requires that level of support. I mean, we operate in the media space. We here at The Daily Wire in the private sector, we take no government money. NPR certainly has the capacity to do the same.
President Trump wrote in the order, government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary, but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.
Trump has directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end indirect funding for NPR and PBS, including by ensuring licensees and permittees of public radio and TV stations, as well as any other recipients of CB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS. This is a great move by President Trump. It is something that is long overdue.
NPR has been, again, a left-wing Democratic agiprop outlet for as long as I have been alive. So that is a very positive move by President Trump. So again, a lot of good things happened yesterday, ranging from that Ukraine rare earth minerals deal to the Trump EO. And we'll still have to see the fallout inside the national security establishment because things remain up in the air.
We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, let's talk about that car that you own, but you don't use. You know, the one in your front yard, the one that is... You're paying to keep it registered, insured. It just takes up space. It's rusting, not doing anybody any good. Well, let me tell you what you should do about that. You should give Cars for Kids a call. Have them take care of it for you.
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Chapter 6: What does the new rare earth minerals deal between the US and Ukraine entail?
President Trump stood up for the Constitution's promise of colorblind equality before the law, so he terminated radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting and directed federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination. DEI seeks to divide and pit Americans against each other based on immutable characteristics. President Trump put an end to it.
In President Trump's America, individual dignity, hard work, and excellence are the only things that will determine if you get ahead.
And that obviously should be the standard. Stephen Miller also stopped by the White House press room in order to explain the destruction of the DEI policies that were being pushed by the Biden administration.
One of the most significant crises that President Trump inherited upon taking office was the wave of racial discrimination, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that have taken over both public sector and private sector entities all across the United States of America.
Well, again, he is right about that as well. Now, with all this important work happening, the biggest thing, I keep saying it over and over, the biggest thing is that if you want President Trump to continue to unleash successes, you need Republicans not to make stupid mistakes. We'll get to the trade war in a moment and what the latest is there.
But the latest stupid mistake that is possibly on the table here is the possibility of Marjorie Taylor Greene running for Georgia Senate. Let us be clear. If she wins the primary, she will lose the general to John Ossoff. That is a deeply winnable seat in Georgia. The polls right now show that if Ossoff were to run against Marjorie Taylor Greene, he would win outright a sheer majority of the vote.
He would beat her by 15 points, 54 to 39. There is no reason for that whatsoever. Zero. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fine where she is. If she's going to be in her district, she's popular in her district, that's fine.
The idea is she's going to win a statewide race in Georgia over John Ossoff, and that Republicans are going to blow another winnable Senate seat because they've decided to nominate a sort of passionate defender, the most passionate defender of Trump. How about this? How about we get a Georgia senator who is in line with President Trump's agenda and actually can sit in the Senate?
So right now, there's been a lot of talk about the possibility of Brian Kemp running for Senate in Georgia. If he were to run for Senate, he would defeat John Ossoff, according to that very same poll. It turns out the candidate quality makes an awfully big difference. And cutting off your nose to spite your face for Republican primary voters is a terrible strategy.
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Chapter 7: What is the Trump administration's stance on sanctions and leverage against Russia?
Again, the statistics from a couple of days ago show that the GDP actually shrank, and that is almost entirely due to the tariff war. According to the Wall Street Journal, gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the first estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Most of the damage came from soaring imports. Imported goods and services rose 41.3% in the quarter, goods alone by almost 51%.
Imports subtracted a startling 5.03% from GDP. A tax increase in production shock as large as Mr. Trump's tariff were bound to do economic harm, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board. So J.D. Vance, vice president, was confronted by Brett Baer on Fox News about the shrinking economic numbers. Here's what he had to say.
The economy shrank first time in three years. People are pointing to the tariff policy. There are people looking at their 401ks that are worried. What do you tell them? Is this going to work?
So the first thing is, when you talk about the economy, this is Joe Biden's economy. And we inherited $2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime deficits in American history, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally means we're not making enough of our own stuff. And the president came in and he said, this is not always going to be easy.
It would have been very easy for Donald Trump to do what administrations past have done, which is borrow a lot of money and continue fueling the national debt. He said, no, we need a reset. We need American workers to have better jobs. We need to protect the jobs that they have right now.
And we need to be more self-reliant as an economy, which, by the way, will drive down those skyrocketing levels of debt that we've seen. That is what he promised he was going to do. And he came in and we've started that process.
OK, so again, the idea here that he inherited Joe Biden's terrible economy and then he had to fix it. And what we're seeing right now as a result of that, once you own the economy, you own the economy. Once you take the signal step of declaring a trade war on the rest of Earth, you do, in fact, own that. That's the reality. Now, maybe everything plays out according to script.
Maybe it all ends up being fine. Maybe America has a more durable manufacturing industry. The economy recovers and all the rest. Maybe. Right now, the weekly jobless claims have surged to 241,000. That is an increase of about 18,000 from the prior period, higher than the Dow Jones estimate for 225,000, according to the Labor Department.
GM, as we've mentioned, faces up to a $5 billion tariff bill in 2025. They've now slashed their outlook. So they had a profit margin that they were projecting that was going to be between $11 billion and $12.5 billion. They've now moved that down to about $8 billion. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
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Chapter 8: Why did President Trump sign an executive order to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS?
McDonald's is starting to see a decline in spending, which is pretty fascinating because, again, that's kind of cheap staple food. I mean, unfortunately, but it is for a lot of people. The burger giant posted a 3% drop in revenue in the first quarter. Same store sales in the U.S. dropped 3.6% from the prior year, the steepest decline since 2020.
So some of that is maybe people becoming a little more health conscious, but a lot of that is just a decline in spending generally. The oil industry is taking a beating right now. The reason the oil industry is taking a beating is because of the trade war, there's less demand for American oil. Less demand means the price goes down.
Prices going down means that there is less development of oil and natural gas, which runs directly up against some of the stuff that Secretary Doug Burgum is trying to do over at Department of the Interior. He's been trying to unleash U.S. energy dominance through deregulation. But if the price of oil drops too low, there's no real reason for people to drill more.
There's no real reason for people to develop new energy if there appears to be a glut of supply. Doug Burgum, we actually had reporters who went with Secretary Burgum out into the field over on Morning Wire, which, by the way, you guys should go check that out. It's a great show, Morning Wire, and is now available on video. Totally worth the watch over at Daily Wire. Go check it out right now.
But Secretary Burgum has been trying to drive up energy production. Hard to do that when the prices are dropping tremendously. So what exactly is going to be the next step here? Well, China may be starting to waver a little bit.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China said it was weighing starting talks with the United States, but only if Washington shows sincerity through concrete measures such as by canceling the tariffs against Beijing. The ministry spokesperson said China's position is consistent. If you want to fight, we'll fight. If you want to talk, our door is wide open. If the U.S.
wants to talk, it should show sincerity and be prepared to act in correcting its erroneous actions and canceling unilateral tariffs. So China wants some signal from Trump that he's backing down. President Trump obviously doesn't want to give that signal. So it may be that this tariff war lasts a little longer than people are currently expecting, including the markets.
Axios says that China is not backing down in the game of chicken with President Trump. China says it sent around 15% of its exports worth $525 billion to the U.S. last year, about three times what flowed in the opposite direction. New export orders are already falling sharply, pretending empty shelves and price hikes in the United States.
China, of course, does have the unique ability to simply cram it down on its own constituents. I mean, the people who live in China, I mean, it's an unfortunate reality, but it turns out that China is a pretty terrible place and they don't care very much about their citizens. So China's being hurt by the trade war, but can they take more pain than the U.S.?
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