The Jay Weber Podcast #0012 5-15-26

The Jay Weber podcast is presented by creative planning, helping clients simplify their journey to financial wellness, one personalized plan at a time. The Jay Weber podcast is a production of IHeart Radio podcasts. Welcome to the Jay Weber podcast. Ahead on this edition, I want to talk about how now that President Trump's mass deportation effort is in full swing and Biden-era criminals are being held accountable, now no one in the media wants to talk about it. Also, let's put some perspective on the relative global strength of China, as President Trump meets directly with Xi Jinping, and how the rest of the country surprised that there probably isn't a blue tsunami coming in fall, but if you listen to this podcast, you should know better. First, I've been sitting here reading a story about how New York City's public schools are spending $44,000 per pupil. Holy cow. New York leaders are now dumping another $43 billion on top of that, and this is all despite rapidly declining enrollment and poor test results. Basically, it's the same situation that the Milwaukee public schools are having here in Wisconsin. Plunging enrollment, all sorts of excess space that they refuse to sell, terrible test scores, and an educational machine that's cranking out generation after generation of melon heads. But hey, let's give MPS leaders some props then. They're providing a god-awful education at about half the price that the New York liberals are. Isn't that something? New York's spending $44,000 per pupil for terrible results. MPS is only spending about $20,000 per pupil for roughly the same terrible results. That is savings, my friends. Say what you want about MPS and its leaders, but they're dooming another generation of our children to a life of poverty, struggle, and ignorance at half the price that New York is. A good listener, the main sponsor of my podcast is Creative Planning Financial Services, and I am happy to endorse them. Have you heard of Creative Planning? They're one of the nation's largest independent wealth management firms, offering fully integrated financial and retirement planning, investment management, estate planning, tax strategies, business services, and international wealth management, all in-house and coordinated through your wealth manager. Their fiduciary wealth managers are here to help you navigate every piece of your financial life. Visit creative planning.com to schedule your... introductory meeting. That's creative planning.com. Your team awaits. Paid for by creative planning, an SEC registered investment advisor. The speaker's statements are not an endorsement of the firm. So the hysteria that the Democrats and America haters were feeling over the president's tough immigration policies seems to have subsided, hasn't it? The activist left simply hops from false outrage to false outrage, of course, grinding away at each one until they think it's not working to whip up their gullible voters, and then they move on. Then they move on to the next one. And hey, their accomplices in the leftist news media also get bored pretty quickly. They move on to something else, too. And so here we are entering year two of President Trump's second term. We're about a year into his aggressive crackdown on illegal aliens that Joe Biden and the socialist left flooded into the country. And there isn't much news about it. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are still going about their business. They're still engaging in daily raids in some of the major cities and targeting South American gangs, etc. They just aren't getting as much attention for it. It's not as controversial as it was a year later because the screaming activists and their propagandists in the news media have largely moved on to something else to scream about. But about a year into this effort to send most illegals back home,

The Trump Department of Homeland Security says that in calendar year 2025, they managed to round up and deport about a half a million illegal aliens while locking down our southern border almost completely. No one, no one is talking about how completely the Trump management team has reduced the amount of illegal immigration across the southern border to nearly zero. It is a wonderful accomplishment and one that 80% of the American people would cheer if the fact was made more apparent to them. But who's going to tell them? The news media? On top of that half million illegals who were physically removed by ICE, an estimated 2 million illegals self-deported, they decided to go home on their own. And so that means that of the 8 to 10 million illegals the America haters let in during Biden's four years, over 2 million of them are gone. A recent interview by the Washington Post noted that at least 80,000 of those illegals who self-deported took the step of filling out official voluntary departure paperwork, which would allow them to return to America legally at some point in the future if they wanted to come in the right way. Voluntary departure is a legal process that allows illegals to agree to leave the country willingly, even though a formal deportation order hasn't been issued for them. They can then be put on a list of those who basically voluntarily cooperated with their government and left willingly. Taking that step means that they aren't banned from permanent reentry later as the illegals who need to be rounded up and deported or who have ignored deportation orders against them are. They're banned. They can't come back in. These illegals leaving voluntarily need to leave the country at their own expense, too. No free flight home paid for the U.S. taxpayers, and they need to be otherwise law-abiding. They can't have a serious criminal record here and expect to get back in. And as you might expect, most of the illegals who decided to leave voluntarily were already sitting in a deportation center. Ah, okay, well, this clarifies some things. Only 30% of the 80,000 illegals who wanted to sign voluntary departure orders were walk-ins. 70% were already in ICE custody awaiting a deportation hearing. They were offered the option, obviously, of agreeing to forego the legal process and simply agree to leave on their own now. And the post talked to immigration advocates who, of course, claimed, well, this reflects the terrible conditions in the detention centers. These people just couldn't take it anymore. Well, the more likely truth is related to two things. First, these are very likely people who knew the jig was up. They knew that even if they went and sent in front of a judge, they were going to be sent back home. A judge was formally going to issue an order that there was no way they were ever going to be allowed back in at that point. Second reason, they decided there was no way Trump's government was going to have mercy on them and let them stay if they put up with lockup longer. And what I mean is the Biden regime, of course, was trying to come up with every possible way to let every illegal stay. Under Biden, nearly all immigration laws were being ignored and everyone was allowed to stay, even criminals. And so if you managed to find yourself locked up in a detention center during the Biden era, you had reason to believe that it was a very temporary thing that in just a few days or weeks you were going to be let go into America, right? But under Trump...

Very different messages are being sent to the larger illegal immigration community and those who are caught by ICE. And the message is, you're going back. You're not going to be allowed to stay here. You're an illegal who is being deported. And so you can't tell me that nearly two million illegal self-deporting and wanting to be placed on a list that keeps them in good standing with the federal government so that they might be able to return to America legally at some future date isn't because of the clear categorical messaging Trump's team is doing on illegals in America. If you are caught, you are going home, and you will never be allowed to return. It proves that messaging matters. And of course, the Democrats don't want to blame Joe Biden for 8 to 10 million illegal streaming into this country on his watch. But every signal that the Biden regime sent to the world was, come on in. We'll let you in if you can just get yourself to a border. We'll set up a new program that'll fly some of you in directly from your home countries. We're making it easy for you. Come. Take advantage of the American taxpayer. Uncle Joe and his scummy Democrat Party is going to take care of you and let you in. Trump's team is sending a very different message. And again, almost none of it is being covered by the news media. But this era's ICE, customs, and border agents are doing great work, and they've set a goal of one million deportations in 2026. I think the average American's perception of things is that Trump's Department of Homeland Security has backed off on deportations. It really hasn't. The media hysteria has just died down. And just as important, Kristi Noem and the numskulls who felt the need to speak in divisive tones and bring all sorts of attention to the crackdowns have also been replaced. I didn't ever think it was a good idea to rub ICE's successes in people's faces as Noam constantly wanted to do. Ice Barbie was only helping to continue to keep this thing a controversial thing. Her successor is much more low-key, and he understands that having ICE agents doing their jobs and more quietly moving all sorts of criminals and illegals out of the country is a far better approach. This is another reason that the whole mass deportation issue has become much lower key, but don't mistake that for ICE having ended its raids. It hasn't. ICE just told Congress that it still wants about 100,000 deportation beds available by the end of this year and has an overall goal of 1 million removals. The legal wrangling over nearly each individual deportation dramatically slows the process, obviously. A year into this, we have a better idea that the overall pace of how fast we can deport in illegal has become more apparent. It takes some time. So none of the insiders really believes that ICE can meet that goal, but one million's a worthy goal to shoot for, and they might be able to make it if you talk about forcible removals versus those that are just more willing to go. And despite what most lefty news organizations want to report, ICE agents still are focusing primarily on criminal illegal aliens and gang members.

The American people are not hearing these news stories, but the Justice Department just charged nearly 30 Trendera Ragro members as part of a cross-country sting to deal with this violent Venezuelan gang. The Washington Times is the conservative newspaper in Washington, D.C. It's one of the rare news outlets that actually focuses on and reports such things. And it said this operation targeted weapons and drug trafficking. Kash Patel, Trump's FBI director, called it a massive takedown of gang affiliates. They confiscated over 80 firearms. They seized 18 kilograms of drugs like fentanyl, coke, methamphetamine, and took more than $100,000 in cash as they charged these gang affiliates in five states, they say. So, Denver, Nashville, Miami, Portland, as well as northern Indiana are all just a little bit safer this week because of that raid. ICE and the DOJ are finally enforcing immigration laws. The Trump Department of Justice is also trying to prosecute everyone they run across as part of these networks and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Last week, a Mexican national, a woman, was sentenced to prison for being part of an international human smuggling operation that was in its glory during the Biden years. These criminals operated with impunity during the Biden era, and they're just now being held accountable for it because the Republicans are in charge. This woman, Monica Hernandez Palmer, was an organizer for a smuggling ring that ushered illegals into the states and over the southern border from November of 2020, right through March of 2023. And these illegals came from all over. But notice the dates. This is the Biden era, November of 2020, right through March of 23. Palmer's smuggling ring included clients from Central and South America and Asia, quote, Afghanistan, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Yemen. And if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was in office, you know this would still be going on. This human smuggling ring would still be operating. This chick worked with another Mexican national who's also been caught and prosecuted. He set up the stash houses and organized the transportation for the ring. And so, you know, most Americans will never know it. The news media won't report it. But Donald Trump's administration is actively shutting down the smuggling operations, human smuggling, sex trafficking, drug trafficking rings that prospered during the Biden Open Borders fiasco. These are significant wins for the American people, and Trump and ICE and the DOJ should get credit for it from voters. But who's going to tell the voters? Not the leftists who control the news media. This week there's also the story of an Iranian American who's a particularly nasty piece of work. This A-Hole actually became a naturalized citizen some years ago, so he was here legally, but he chose to use his time in America to operate a human smuggling ring that brought illegals from Iran, including at least one member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Sharon Gohari just went ahead and pled guilty to all sorts of federal charges recently. The feds found all sorts of violent child porn on his phone, as well as photos of women he seemed to be stalking in New York City. This monster doesn't seem to have a single redeemable quality, and yet he was here in America running a smuggling operation that also has dates that greatly mirrored the Biden administration. It's not a coincidence that these smuggling operations were at their height during Biden's open borders.

When he and his White House were ordering border and ICE agents to stand down and ordering federal prosecutors to look the other way, allow the illegality continue, this is what we got. This guy was smuggling Iranians. Iranians between late 2020 and May of last year. Again, those dates aren't a coincidence. Folks, every part of the Biden era flood of illegals into this country was intentional and fraudulent. And a lot of that bold criminality and fraud is just becoming known now. Now that Trump's team is in charge of these agencies that deal with it, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, DOJ. Only now are we learning that a special student visa program is really nothing more than a scam as well that's related to immigration. This is a program that's meant to allow foreigners who are here on student visas to stay longer if they can hook up with certain U.S. employment. Trump's auditors have finally gotten around to giving this a closer look. The optional practical training program is just fraud. What they found is, like virtually all other government programs, it's rife with fraud. To the point that this program, the entire program seems to be fraudulent. There's no way to claim a need for this program to continue. But it turns out, just like we've seen in the massive Minnesota and California Social Services programs that fraud were finding there just because Trump's team is finally looking, what they found with this program is that 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for employers aren't. Investigators found empty buildings where hundreds of foreign students were supposed to be working, again, just fraudulent. They found multiple employers claiming that one same address. None actually had a lease to that building. They found small homes listed as work sites for hundreds of foreign students, and of course, no employees were present. When someone answered the door, they had no knowledge that their address was being used fraudulently. And like the non-existent children in Minneapolis, that quality learning center that was just a fraud, many of these supposed young grads couldn't even be found. Agents found bogus addresses and home residences listed as hosting hundreds of foreign students in this program. And, of course, none of them were around. The government doesn't know where any of these people are. One employer in northern Texas visited by ICE agents claimed to be hosting three of these students, even though the agency said its own paperwork said it was hosting 500. In New Jersey, same thing. Agents visited an employer listed as hosting 150 of these special foreign workers. They found only a single student employee was there, and the employer couldn't answer questions about the other 149 that were missing. The acting ICE director, Todd Lyons, said, this fraud is not victimless. It is a blatant attack on the American people. This program was created for a limited number of people initially, and under the Obama administration, it suddenly boomed. Suddenly over 400,000 foreign students were authorized to work under this OPT program.

So that program should just be plowed under. But we've been talking about some of the rampant ingrained, massive fraud that's being found now that Trump and Doge are actually looking. The fraud investigations in California and Minnesota specifically are leading to shocking and disgusting new revelations every day. And it's no mistake that virtually all of the fraudulent schemes that are being discovered in our social services and immigration programs were started under the Biden and Obama administrations. I mean, we're talking about this being intentional. We're talking about the Democrats of that era with the blessings of those presidents, obviously, intentionally forming all sorts of criminal and ugly schemes to defraud the American people in order to boost their far-left agenda. They wanted to use our own taxpayer money against us. Thought that was cute. These scummy geniuses in the Obama and Biden eras who were running those regimes clearly engaged in an organized campaign to steal from U.S. taxpayers and then use that money against us. Use that money to further weaken, abuse, and destroy America. It really is infuriating. And no, no one important at the top who ordered this sort of stuff. None of them will be held accountable. No. But thank God for President Trump and his team of people who are finally finding it and ending it. And why are they? Well, because they're the first administration whose team members are actually looking for it, prioritizing ending the fraud. And I think that is a very important point to make as we look back at the last five or six administrations. This is the first administration in my lifetime who, from the top, got orders to, by God, do audits across the federal government and find the fraud. And it's leading to big wins for the American people that Trump and the Republicans are getting almost no credit for because the leftist news media isn't reporting on any of it. News Talk 1130 WISN. He's proud to present the Jay Weber podcast. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary to craft an insightful look at the major stories and impactful issues from around Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. And after you've enjoyed the Jay Weber podcast, we invite you to go to your radio or go online and listen to News Talk 1130 WISN, Wisconsin's most listened. Radio Station. So South Carolina's Republicans have decided not to redraw their congressional map. There's only one Democrat district in South Carolina as it is, and that's held by Jim Clyburn, by the way, the longtime Democrat who has so much influence in the Democrat Party down south and in D.C. The Republicans who controlled the South Carolina Senate voted on whether to reopen this process in light of the Supreme Court's ruling banning racial gerrymandering, and the vote fell two yeses short. It did because five Republicans, five, chose to side with the Democrats in the chamber and vote not to redraw their map. It virtually guarantees that Trump and his activists are going to put a target onto the backs of the five squishy Republicans who voted against this effort.

efforts will be underway to primary them the next time they run for re-election. But bottom line, South Carolina is not likely to participate in any last-minute effort to redraw the congressional maps of theirs for 2028 before the next census. Tennessee is moving forward, Alabama, Louisiana, they're moving forward, not South Carolina, at least not for now. Meanwhile, the Democrats' insane reaction to the Virginia Supreme Court striking down their attempt there to cheat their own system in that state. has been so ridiculous that it can only have harmed the party even more. We had talked about this last podcast. Hakeem Jeffries and other national and Virginia Democrats are scheming to get around or ignore the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, they're also scheming to get around the Virginia Supreme Court. And in the process, they are making moves that are anti-Republic. This is extreme and republic killing sort of stuff, so I was glad to see the strong backlash to this lunacy and coming from both sides of the aisle. Ari Fleischer, an old Bush-era insider, made a great point on social media when he said conservatives have been dealing with Supreme Court rulings that they haven't liked for generations, like Roe v. Wade, and we've never called to court pack or fire all the judges or resort to violence. Some Democrat lawmakers and an awful lot of their activists have angrily suggested all of those things in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling banning racial gerrymandering and the ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court. There's a very scummy and extreme America hater named Hasan Piker, whom the Democrats and their activists have adopted. They've chosen to make this guy one of their social media stars, and he is absolutely awful. Clearly, communist America hater. Hasan Piker is either pretending to be this hateful and nasty and anti-America as a way to get attention and enrich himself, or he's genuinely a communist and a vile human being who no one should be listening to. Instead, for some reason, today's Democrats have adopted him as one of their next generation thought leaders. Well, after the Virginia Supreme Court rightly shot down the Democrats' extreme attempt to cheat their maps, Hasan Piker called for armed revolution. Quote, the VA Supreme Court denied the results of the redistricting referendum. Scotus gutted the Voting Rights Act and Tennessee carved up the last Democrat district destroying black voter power in the state. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, he said. This is who the Democrats are campaigning alongside and having headlines all sorts of their fundraisers. A man who spits venom at America at every chance he gets and who's openly calling for violent revolution. This is today's Democrat Party. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, D.C. and Virginia Democrats are talking about a crazy extreme way to get around the Virginia Supreme Court. You've probably heard about it. They want to basically fire every member of the state Supreme Court in Virginia and pack it with leftists appointed by their new socialist governor, and then they would have that court allow them to put their extreme map into place. That doesn't sound too radical, does it?

These are the people who've been mindlessly insisting that Donald Trump is destroying democracy for nearly a decade now, right? These are the defenders of democracy? No, but these are typical Democrats today. They don't care about democracy and they're going to lie, cheat, steal, and assassinate until they get their way. This is today's Democrat Party and Democrat Party base. Charles Cook of the National Review did a great thought exercise in the wake of all this and said, let's imagine if this was Donald Trump and Republicans. He said, imagine the following scenario. Donald Trump says he's going to run for president again in 2028 on the grounds that it's necessary to ensure fairness and protect our democracy. This is the excuse that the Virginia Democrats used to redraw a map and force it on to the state. He says after Trump wins, let's say the Democrat Party says his plan to run again is unconstitutional and asks the Supreme Court to prevent Trump from running again. In the ensuing litigation, the Republican Party tells the Supreme Court that it has to wait to adjudicate this constitutional question until the completion of the proceedings based on the principle that courts shouldn't interfere while elections are underway. So the Supreme Court agrees. Then Donald Trump wins the election. 5148 Donald Trump wins. Charles Cook says, The Democrats would then sue, arguing Trump has violated the 22nd Amendment that bans anyone from becoming president the third time, and the Supreme Court would agree and strike down the election. Let's follow that scenario. Has the Supreme Court then thwarted the will of the people? Because Trump won that third election, right? This is the exact same scenario that occurred in Virginia, exact same set of events. Would today's Democrats insist that Donald Trump needed to get a third term because the people have voted? Of course not. They would have rightly stopped a constitutional violation in its tracks. That is what the Virginia Supreme Court did, the constitutional thing, the responsible thing, the right thing. That's what the Virginia Supreme Court members did. And so if you're a Democrat who thinks those judges should all be fired and replaced over it, you're a dimwit who's drinking the leftist Kool-Aid. Moreover, as Charles Cook also points out, the media members who are echoing the most reckless and irresponsible voices on the left should know better. Maybe a bunch of leftist rank-and-file members are angry idiots that are going to spout off on social media and talk stupid and call for violence. But as a member of the so-called news media, you should know better, and you should be critical of those dangerously dumb arguments and statements. And this brings us to the 26 horse race to keep control of Congress about six months out. Some people are suggesting that these events in Virginia and the state Supreme Court are going to have a big impact on the fall results. I'm not certain of that. We're about six months away now from the fall elections, and I've been suggesting that Democrats and most of the news media on both sides of the aisle have had it wrong anyway. Even with the higher inflation and gas prices this week, I'm not seeing a blue tsunami election coming this fall. If I had to guess, I'd say the Democrats probably do win back control of the House because they only need to flip three or four or five seats, but I think Republicans keep control of the Senate.

If there's any historical pattern that has been virtually rock solid for the 250 years of this country, it's that the president's party loses congressional seats in the election after he's been elected. This means history is on the Democrats' side when it comes to trying to win back the House and the Senate. History alone would seem to make it a lock that Democrats win some number of House seats and Democrats take control. But it isn't a given. And it's not this year for a few reasons, including by and large President Trump and Republicans are keeping the promises they made to run a better government than Joe Biden did. Economy aside, the borders secure, mass deportations are underway, eco-zealotry and trans-bullying are all but dead, girls aren't being forced into boys' sports, etc. History might have a pattern here, but it's also true that at this moment in time, Trump and his party are on the right side of nearly every issue that the American people care about, and for the most part are paying off on the promises they made in 2024. Economy no. Everything else? Pretty much. Not only are today's Democrats on the wrong side of the issues, meanwhile, they have taken a step away from sanity on most of those issues. Folks, on left-wing social media, defund the police is back. Defund ICE is back. In fact, in that matter, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Democrats in Congress have joined it. They've taken the defund ICE effort into Congress. The Democrats are openly talking about raising every tax on every American that they can dream up if they're put back into control. Democrat leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries now are openly talking about engaging in extreme cheating and stealing control of the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster so they can ram their extreme agenda home any time they want the next time they're in power. Folks, gas and grocery prices are angering just about everyone, yes. But the Biden era has already proven that the Democrats have no answers. They clearly have no idea how to run an economy. Most Americans realize that Trump does, even if he's not proving it right now. I think most reasonable people understand that he's also dealing with challenges like Iran. But the fall elections are not a slam dunk. I've been saying this for weeks. I don't see Republicans having some sort of different and more significant advantage due to more congressional seats by fall either. I think virtually all attempts to make new maps in those red states will be blocked in court at the time the voting starts. So way too many other pundits, I think, are putting way too much stock in the whole maps advantage. Republicans aren't really going to have a significant advantage come fall, if you ask me. Let's be realistic. But again this week, Data Cruncher over at CNN, Harry Enten, angered CNN's lefty viewers when he admitted there doesn't seem to be a huge Democrat advantage in the numbers of the latest CNN poll. Etton, in his typical style, screamed about this poll being a reality check for Democrats. You would think, but I think this poll serves as a big time reality check for Democrats. And that is, it ain't over yet, especially with the redistricting when we look ahead to the 2026 race for Congress. You would have thought that the Democrats lead would expand on the generic congressional ballot. It didn't happen. Look, in March, Democrats were up by six points. Look at this now.

Democrats are up by three points, and I want you to note the yellow lettering. No clear leader. It is within the margin of error. So despite all of the talk about Donald Trump's unpopularity, the fact is, Republicans very much remain in the game when it comes to the congressional midterms which are occurring in what? Six or seven months at this point? So a lead of three points in the generic ballot test here. Does that get the job done? Okay, take a look here. Democrats in the National House vote margin. According to my estimate, what they need for control with redistricting in terms of the national popular vote is somewhere of a win between three and four points. What's CNN's current poll with no clear leader? It's a three-point advantage. If this were, in fact, the actual result come election day, the race for Congress, the race for the House. would be basically a toss-up. And that is why the redistricting efforts that have been happening are so important. Because before the redistricting happened, Democrats essentially just needed to win the National House popular vote in order to win control. of the House of Representatives. But now, with the redistricting, their latter, they had the climb ever higher, and a three-point win may very well not do it. This is well within the realm of possibilities. It could be Democrats take back the House. You know, if Democrats outperform the CNN poll by a few points, they take it back, but they could underperform as well, and that would be big-time trouble. He and I differ on whether or not the maps are going to make a huge difference, but he didn't see the rather small advantage the Democrats have on that voter preference question is a big deal, and I agree with that. One important result, CNN's poll showed that most voters don't trust Donald Trump on the economy anymore, but they also don't trust the Democrats either. So the big blue wave election that most pundits in the news media keep talking about is not destiny, not sitting six months out anyway. Then there's the poll I found amusing shows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being the frontrunner for the Democrats in the 2028 nomination. Good grief. This is the first poll that I've seen like this. I want to make it clear. Most show Kamala Harris leading, and I strongly believe she won't be the Democrat nominee either. Most people give her name to pollsters because they can't name another Democrat who might be running for president. I think that's why she's leading these polls right now. Remember, most Americans don't follow current events and politics as closely as you do. They know Kamala Harris's name because she ran and lost last time, and she was the VEP for four years. At some point, you absorb the names of our leaders. But does the average voter know who Gavin Newsom is or who Pete Buttigieg is? No. That might surprise you, but it's true. We live in a nation full of ignorance, basically. But an Atlas Intel survey shows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leading all others on the Democrat side for 2028. They have her at 26% support with Mayor Pete next at 22, Gavin Newsom at 21%, and then Cammy is pulling up the rear at just 13%.

Atlas says they surveyed about 2,000 adults in early May and came up with this result. It means nothing. I mean, we're way too far away from the election. We have no idea who the actual candidates will be. The only thing a poll like this could do would be to encourage Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run because she thinks she's got a good chance at winning this thing, right? I still wonder if Kamala Harris is actually dumb enough to run. She'd be smarter to parlay the results of these early polls into a quiet retirement that stupidly has her fellow Democrats talking about her every four years throughout the 2030s. I mean, if you think about it, Kamala Harris has some cachet now, two years away from an election that she'd very likely lose again, that would leave her as a three-time loser and a lightweight dimwit who no one wanted to talk to or even see anymore. Or she could retire from politics now and could go out as a potential candidate over the next several races. If Kamala Harris is smart enough not to run after the nitwits in polls claim that she should be the front runner for two years, then in 2032, 36, 40, we'll get, is Kamala Harris going to run headlines? She's still young and the party could use her sage wisdom. It's baloney, but that's how they would spin it for years if she didn't run. If she does run in 28, she probably doesn't even get the party nomination, and she spends the rest of her life in quiet disgrace. If Kamala Harris and her husband are at all smart, they will do the typical Tommy Thompson or Oprah thing here and encourage all the talk every four years without having any actual intention of running. That's the sort of thing that still sort of keeps your name in the media, gets you the book deals, gets you on the speaking circuit. We know Cammy's pretty dumb, so her husband might need to get her to see the light here. But we also know that she has made a career out of ladder climbing. If you really want to become some sort of media star and veteran celebrity, the better call here is for Cammy not to run. She's been a vapid ladder climber and a pretender her whole life, right? So she should probably see this path. If she really wants to be part of that class of veteran politicians who are still asked their opinion and touring the country on book tours and sales seminars, She won't run. As for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she won't get the nomination either. I refuse to believe that most Democrat Party members in this country both A, A, want socialism, and B, can't see what a genuine moron Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is. For Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get the 2028 nomination, most Democrats would have to think that way. They'd have to both want socialism and be unable to see what a genuine moron she is. Her winning the nomination would require both. It would require two-thirds of Democrats in this country to say, yes, we want socialism, and no, I can't see what an effing moron Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is. I just can't allow myself to believe Americans are that far gone. Not yet. News Talk 1130 WISN is proud to present the Jay Weber podcast. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary to craft an insightful look at the major stories and impactful issues from around Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. And after you've enjoyed the Jay Weber podcast, we invite you to go to your radio or go online and listen to News Talk 1130 WISN, Wisconsin's most listened

Radio Station. My friends, I know nothing about Princeton University. I went to UW Madison, never had the opportunity to attend one of the Kay Ivey Leagues, so I have zero knowledge when it comes to Princeton. But apparently, Princeton has had a famous Honor Code policy when it comes to cheating, and it has had it since 1893. Yeah, since 1893, none of the students at Princeton have ever had a proctor watching them during exams. There's never been a need for one, allegedly. Because every single Princeton student was so virtuous and honest that if they took a pledge not to cheat, that was enough for Princeton's professors and administrators. Honestly, it's been the policy on cheating at Princeton since 1893. Take a pledge not to cheat. And then for the rest of your academic career here, we don't need to worry about you or monitor tests or anything. How wonderful. So what could possibly come along to ruin this wonderful situation at Princeton? AI. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that both faculty and undergrads at Princeton are now saying that access to AI on the student's phones is leading to all sorts of cheating on exams. So on Monday, faculty voted to require proctoring an all in-person exam starting this summer. This change came after significant numbers of undergrads and faculty apparently requested it. Given their perception, the cheating on in-class exams has become so widespread. A lot of them are taken on computers, and so you only need to switch windows and you can access AI, right? The professor would never notice. The story says AI has both made it easier for students to cheat and harder to spot. This new policy means instructors will be present during exams and they'll document any infractions. They observe. The story says they report those to a student-run Honor Committee for adjudication. A Princeton senior says she thinks most students support this new policy because it alleviates pressure to report classmates when you see cheating. The ease of cheating has created a growing temptation, she said. If the exam is on a laptop, someone can just flip to another window, or if the exam is in a blue book, it's just people using their phone under their desk or going to the bathroom and using it. In a survey of over 500 seniors conducted by the student newspaper at Princeton last year, 30% reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam, and nearly half-reported knowledge of someone else cheating. But they didn't turn them in. Less than 1% made a report turning somebody in. These steps taken at Princeton underscore the enormous challenges facing colleges and universities as generative AI tools have become widespread in recent years. The Wall Street Journal says. Professors at campuses across the country have turned to old-fashioned blue books, oral exams, and AI detection software to combat cheating. They say students are now using AI detection programs on their own essays before turning them in to avoid getting caught. by their teacher's software. As one faculty member puts it, at stake here is not just the soul of education, but also the genuine development of critical thinking among the population. Would you go to a doctor that used AI throughout all of medical school? Would you hire a lawyer to defend you who used AI to take the bar exam? I agree completely. Access to AI represents all sorts of challenges, but there should be a very real worry that longer term, it's going to make humans dumber.

Not every human, but how is the average human not going to be dumber if they can turn to AI to avoid doing any actual critical thinking, avoid doing any real writing or any actual calculation or planning? We run the real risk of taking the human race backward, making us as a whole dumber, thanks to AI. For heaven's sake, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a U.S. Congresswoman who thinks that World War II is World War I. Zohran Mamdani thinks that borrowing a massive chunk of money in order to zero out a line on a balance sheet is ending a budget deficit. See? See, we borrowed $12 billion, but see that line says zero now. If this is the level of our current Democrat leadership, what sort of stooges are going to be asked to lead us in the age of AI? And this is all happening as the Chikom threat looms. This is the next topic. You've heard about this California mayor who just admitted she's a Chinese spy. Eileen Wang is pleading guilty to federal charges. She faces 10 years in prison because U.S. officials finally caught up to her. Yeah, I've been a Chinese spy this entire time, she told him. This is a woman who is 58 years old and has been, quote, active in California and local politics for decades out there. on the coast. She rose to the level of mayor of Arcadia, California, and she and her fiance the entire time were allegedly secretly working on behalf of the Chinese government. Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People's Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on U.S. soil between 2020 and 2022. She worked with her then fiancé, Mike Sun. on a website called U.S. News Center, which claimed to be a news source for Chinese Americans. In reality, the pair were carrying out Beijing's orders through the site, the feds say. The indictment says Wang and Sun executed directives from the Chinese government, posting propaganda designed to boost China, all while reporting back to their masters with screenshots, showing how many people viewed the stories. This isn't the first time the China's influence in America has been discovered either. You'll all remember Fang Fang, the Chinese spy that Congressman Eric Swalwell employed as a close aide for years and eventually slept with her while they were working together. A Chinese spy was discovered to be on Senator Feinstein's staff after 20 years. She had a limousine driver who for 20 years was a Chinese spy. A lot of people forget that incident. And the truth is, the chikoms have built a rather impressive web of spying and influence over California in those West Coast states. This Eileen Wang was, ironically, celebrated the entire time. She was, quote, the first Asian woman to hold all sorts of positions and do all sorts of things out there in Arcadia. They made a huge deal out of her being elected mayor in 2022, of course. First Chinese woman to do this. First Chinese woman to do that. Well, now she's the first Chinese mayor to be arrested on espionage charges and plead guilty. The DOJ describes her as working as an unregistered foreign agent for communist China, doing whatever her handlers told her to do, and running interference for Beijing while enjoying all the benefits of American citizenship. In other words, she's a traitor. And she's just one of many of those sorts of Chinese agents secretly working on behalf of China in this country.

Both the Obama and Biden regimes got famously sloppy when it came to dealing with China, and Biden's regime in particular ordered all sorts of ICE, customs, and FBI agents not to do their jobs for four years. So of course China took advantage. Of course our global enemies took advantage. It's not a mistake that now that the Trump administration is allowing FBI agents to investigate suspicious people again, We've been finding all sorts of foreign spies and questionable foreign actors in this country, including several who've been caught hanging around and or roaming around U.S. military bases. How did these people get into the country? Sloppy bureaucracies and an Obama and Biden administration that encouraged all sorts of border and national security agencies to look the other way. That's how. In New York, one of Andrew Cuomo's diversity officers was outed as a Chinese spy. Then, Kathy Hochul's deputy chief of staff was outed as a spy. Folks, you don't rise to the level of deputy chief of staff in just a few weeks or months, and you don't hold that position for long if Kathy Hochul's vetting team and or our law enforcement agencies are actually doing their jobs. This chick did. In fact, Kathy Hochul's deputy chief of staff, one Linda Sun, was found to be a serial tax evader as well once they started looking into her. So was she even vetted by Hokel's team before she was hired? Not long ago, we were talking about so-called Chinese police stations being discovered in the U.S. This is going on, too. They are very real, and they still haven't gotten the attention they deserve. Our congressmen were validating this. Yes, the Chinese have been caught in places like California, Nevada, and New York, running secret police stations wherein they keep Chinese nationals in line and working for the Chinese government. In California, the Chinese have been caught with labs that held dangerous poisons and toxins. This obviously suggests that if at some future date, the Chinese government wanted to unleash instances of chemical or toxic warfare on America, they could, and they'd already have the poisons here. Remember, this is the country that developed the COVID virus and couldn't contain it in their weapons lab over there. But in California and Nevada, federal investigators have linked the Chinese to military and cyber espionage conducted here, fentanyl and human smuggling, beating and harassing Chinese immigrants at these secret police stations who are targeted to be spies and operatives from other China. This is nasty stuff, and it's occurring here. As our American leaders seem to look the other way, be completely ignorant to the various threats the Chinese government poses to us as the only other superpower on the planet. And by the way, these are the sorts of things I would hope and expect President Trump to bring up with the Chinese president during the closed door portions of their meetings. I highly doubt Obama or Biden would have, but these are precisely the sorts of things that U.S. presidents should be bringing up behind closed doors during these rare face-to-face meetings with other leaders. The types of things that could cause international incidents if you react too strongly publicly but need to be dealt with.

Trump might well have said, gee, we got to talk about all of the spying and the cyber espionage and your efforts to flood our country with fentanyl, too. This meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping came at an interesting time, a time in which both leaders are rather weak at home. Trump's Iran war obviously has touched off new inflation and high gas prices. It's threatening the U.S. economy. At the same time, the China economy is in trouble, and it's being affected by Trump's oil and blockade coming out of Iran, too. Iran's biggest oil customer is China. Trump is also choking off oil to Cuba. He has taken Venezuela away from the communists. These had to be some rather tense meanings, if you think about it, because Donald Trump has made several major and intentional moves to both weaken China's influence globally and move to make America less dependent on China and Chinese goods. This Trump era has not been a good era for Xi Jinping or China. The Chikoms cannot like Donald Trump. It isn't a mistake that Elon Musk and dozens of U.S. business people went along on this trip because both Trump and Xi Jinping realized that maybe business, commerce, is about the only thing they can agree upon. Both apparently want closer business ties to the other's country, but at the same time, both men are trying to reduce their country's dependence on the other. But if you think about it, every friend the China has globally has either been weakened or has withered under the Trump presidencies. Nicholas Maduro and the communists are no longer controlling Venezuela. That was China's big friend in the Western Hemisphere. Trump and Marco Rubio are squeezing the communist regime in Cuba now, hoping to bring about regime change from within. There, events in Syria during the Biden and Trump years have taken Syria off the map as a friend of China in the Middle East. Trump and Beebe have harshly crippled the Iranian regime and all but eliminated Iran as a powerful ally for China. Then there's Vladimir Putin isn't nearly the powerful global neighbor that he once was to Xi Jinping and the Chinese because he's fought a never-ending war of attrition with Ukraine entering year four. Who are China's powerful global friends right now? Because they're losing friends rapidly with this guy, Trump, in office. It's been ridiculous to see suggestions in the media that Trump needs Xi Jinping more than Xi Jinping needs Trump. Bologna. Xi Jinping is desperately waiting around for the Trump era to be over because, A, he's losing all sorts of his friends globally, and B, Trump isn't dumb enough or weak enough to be pushed around like Obama and Biden were. I mean, that's really what's going on here. Joe Biden was particularly bad. He would routinely boast about what a great friendship he had with Xi Jinping. And we learned, of course, that he and his son were clearly being funneled millions, if not tens of millions of dollars from China on secretive and fraudulent business deals. It got so bad Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to fly over Alaska and then over the entire length of the country without doing anything about it. Which party here in America do you think Xi Jinping and the Chai Coms would rather be dealing with? It isn't even close. The numskulls in the media insists that Trump desperately needs China when it comes to dealing with Iran and Taiwan and trade, baloney. Trump's been handling all of them adeptly without any Chinese help. All he needs from China is to stay out of the way and not help Iran's mullahs or try to prop up their regime. That's what we need from China.

You've got to believe that some of that is going on in secret, but it says a lot about how strong China's government really is that as America has dealt with Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, the chikoms have stood by and done nothing. This is something that is being completely overlooked. With each move Trump and his team make to actually deal with these decades-long problems, the hand ringers and the ninnies insist, Trump's going to touch off World War III here. What about China? Well, I don't know. He's moved against Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and so far, Xi Jinping has sat in his hands. It exposes the truth that as much as we worry about China and as much as it is right to do so, folks, China is not nearly the sort of menacing superpower that most pundits would have you believe. Yeah, we should worry about them as a national threat. Yes, they are leading in global manufacturing and probably AI at the moment, but this is not a country whose leaders think that they're on an even playing field or battlefield with America. Several friends of mine who have actually lived in China for some period of time have come back and they've told me Chinese leaders put an impressive front on. They've tricked the world into believing they're an all-knowing and all-powerful country, but in several ways they're a paper tiger. The country is, in truth, not as much of a global threat as its leaders want you to believe. Life in China just doesn't reflect that, they say. And it's not surprising that people who have actually seen China from the inside would say that. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are often weaker and more unstable than the outward face that they put on for the globe. Some of you will remember how pathetic Saddam Hussein's army and Iraq overall was once we finally invaded Iraq and dealt with him and found out the truth. Saddam didn't have nearly the army nor the reach or power that he constantly insisted he had in the Middle East. Saddam was the definition of Paper Tiger and had managed to stay in power all of those years by boldly lying to the world, especially to the other leaders in the Middle East. He didn't want his neighbors to know how easily Iraq could be invaded and conquered, and we learned all this after Baghdad fell. And China isn't a rock. Don't misunderstand me. China is a constant threat we have to take seriously. But the aura around communist China and its overall global strength is starting to crack. Xi Jinping's economy has been weak and troublesome for him for quite some time now. For decades, China was the place for companies to go to find cheap labor and manufacturing. That's changing slowly over time. For decades, the Chinese had almost unfettered access to the American market, and we and our spending, helped build China up to this current level of greatness they have. But that's changing. Trump's policies are only speeding up this Western diversification away from Chinese manufacturers. It's been slowly going on. All sorts of Chinese manufacturing has flown into Vietnam, India, even Mexico. The idea that we need China and its markets more than China needs us is no longer true, if it ever was.

As one article puts it, public propaganda may project confidence, but China's internal caution tells another story. Yeah. It means something that Xi Jinping didn't leap to help Russia in Ukraine. It means something that China didn't react when Andy Beshear Bashar al-Assad's regime fell in Syria. It means something that China didn't react when Trump physically snatched up Nicholas Maduro and knocked that communist regime for a loop. I mean, consider this. Trump had our military fly down and snatch up the president of another country. And Venezuela's biggest global ally, China, did nothing. China and Xi Jinping do nothing as Trump and Marco Rubio squeeze Cuba like a stress ball. This means something. It means that Xi Jinping and the leaders of China are still smart enough not to want to mess with the United States or start anything that might look like the start of World War III. They clearly know they are not in the position to do that. They're not in a position of strength globally. And so worries about how will China react are very different now than they have been over the last four presidencies. Yes. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We will talk again later. The Jay Weber Podcast is a production of IHeart Radio Podcasts, produced and engineered by Gregory John. The Jay Weber podcast is presented by creative planning, helping clients simplify their journey to financial wellness, one personalized plan at a time. Listen to all of Jay Weber's podcasts, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.