Will the State of the Union Calm Economic Anxieties?

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so much time before they say, look, it's on you to fix this. That's exactly right. And that's why he does need to make sure he's laying out the breadcrumbs of what people are going to start to feel over these next few months that he says he has created and set up through his policies, whether it is the major boost they're going to get in their tax returns, whether it is the increase in take home pay that they're starting to see. Some of this, the challenges, we can see economic indicators in charts that show us the economy is doing a lot. better people don't necessarily feel that in their own lives for a period of you know in a lot of cases three or four months so he's confident they're gonna start to see that But he needs to make sure they're attributing it to what he did with the big beautiful bill, with the biggest deregulatory agenda ever. It's complicated because helping people understand how cutting regulations makes things less affordable is a little bit more of an academic conversation. But as they see lower prices at the pump and so many other places, they're going to start to feel it. And that's what he wants to make sure he's laying out for people. We know there was a big meeting last week among administration officials about messaging ahead of midterms. And it sounds like they do get that people want to hear about the economy. And as you point out, polling has shown a bit of disappointment on this front. So does the president need to express more sympathy or is it make a bold new proposal or is it both? I think it's both. I do think it's a balancing act. And this was another kernel in that reporting about these sort of all hands on debt campaigning meeting they had, was they can strategize about messaging, but the president is going to kind of do his own thing. And his own thing up to this point has really been a little bit more about downplaying the affordability issue. The president actually has in a lot of different situations, whether it's foreign policy, whether it's, you know, meeting with families of troops, families of victims. He's very good at empathy on a number of different issues. I think if he can tie a bit more empathy with some of those really big ideas that he's talking about that show creativity. Honestly, this is one area where he will get a bit of an A for effort. If he can highlight the fact that he's recognizing there's an affordability challenge, and his team is working really hard to come up with different ways to address it. Do we see an announcement regarding... new legislation that he wants the House to pursue? I mean, just in case, just in case the Republicans are not in the majority in the House next year, is there a sense of urgency to getting his agenda through? He needs to lay out markers for why voters should keep Republicans in office. He won't necessarily be on the ballot, but his ideas and his entire legacy will be on the ballot. And if Democrats take over the House and Senate, they're going to work very quickly to undo everything he tried to do. On the other side of that, he can lay out the stakes for why you should want to keep Republicans in office beyond just not wanting Democrats in office. And so I do think that's really, really important. I know he's worked really closely with congressional leaders to try and map out.

what some of those pieces could be. There's still conversation about a potential second reconciliation bill that could cover so many different issues. There's a lot of appetite to continue trying to codify some of the doge cuts, some of these sort of infrastructural changes. But I think in the nearest term, and I... would really be shocked if he didn't bring this up is something like the SAVE Act on voter ID, which we know has 80 to 85% support across the country. Anything he can bring up to highlight the 80-20 issues where he and Republicans are on the right side and Democrats and their leaders are on the fringe will be incredibly helpful. And the more of those he can work into this speech, the easier it is for him to rally and for his allies on Capitol Hill to carry the banner on those messages. Now, things move really fast, so some stories fall through the cracks. I'm thinking, does anything, I'm putting you on the spot here, does anything come to mind about what the president may want to highlight and draw people's attention to that may have been missed, whether that's relating to the economy or deregulation or something else? I expect he'll talk about fraud. And I think fraud touches so many other things. And I think that's important because understanding how so much of our money goes into these sort of fraudulent schemes, whether it's just in small states, like we've seen, not small states, California may have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fraud. We know Minnesota is looking at about $9 billion. But we also know in the federal government, we spend about a trillion dollars or more a year and fraud on all sorts of different things, particularly in the health care system. So one thing that I do hope he gets an opportunity. to lay out is what he's done particularly on the fraud issue in health care, whether it is cutting fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid, or his fight on price transparency. This is another one of those, honestly, 90-10 issues where he and congressional leaders have talked about pairing price transparency, which would require hospitals, everybody else, to tell you exactly how much you're going to be paying for any kind of care you get with more access to health care dollars, whether it's through health savings plans, things like that. And that, to me, is something where there is opportunity to move forward. There's victories that he's already had in the past that he and tie to it. And it's a momentum builder that really plugs into the affordability conversation. You know, one of the biggest stories ahead of this state of the union is the tariff decision from the Supreme Court, as we know, the president's re-implemented new short-term tariffs. But companies are still arguing they should get a refund. Could you see the president addressing this saying maybe we'll give the American people a tariff dividend with that money instead? Does he take away the issue from the... refund process story? Or would that idea be pretty inflationary and not a great idea? I think that's the tough thing, right? I think that the problem right now is most polling shows us that people don't associate tariffs with lower costs. I think he's got a pretty good story to tell in how he's used tariffs to negotiate trade deals that can be beneficial. I think the brand of tariffs in general has taken a pretty big hit throughout his presidency. And I think the more time he spends talking about tariffs and the more time he spends talking about his disagreement with this.

Supreme Court, the less time he has to rally people around actionable things. The media would love to write stories about the State of the Union that's solely focused on Republican infighting, a Republican civil war, President Trump attacking his own justices, and they may very well be in the room with him. I think the more he can avoid that and focus on sort of actual tangible takeaways. And I do think part of that could be touting these trade deals that have been incredibly beneficial that we already know most of the leaders of these countries, even after this Supreme Court decision want to hold to those deals. You know, as the president delivers this speech, there have been Americans stuck in Mexico due to next level cartel violence after the Mexican government killed the head of a major drug organization, the CJNG. Mexico's defense secretary said U.S. Northern Command Intelligence was extremely helpful in aiding in this operation. Is this something the president highlights as a win or is it delicate because there have been deaths of Mexican officials and even some civilians? I do think it's a win because it's a part of a longer term arc that he's been trying to bring attention to since the beginning of his first term, which is these are the most dangerous things on the other side of the border that Democrats have opened up and made us vulnerable too. So the fight against cartels has been a priority of his from the beginning. I think it is very positive to be able to say, we have helped Mexico finally take on this major issue that has been a part of our own immigration crisis. You know, I think when you look at just, the sheer numbers of people who have come across the border in the Biden years that didn't have any kind of vetting, no paperwork, we have no idea. How many of those were tied to these same incredibly dangerous cartels? I think President Trump will tie this into his theme of all we needed was a new president. And I think Mexico taking this fight to the cartels and lowering the temperature on those dangers right across the border is another victory that he'll want to be able to take some part in. This past year, Democrats have had a lot of electoral successes, including in some historically red seats like a Texas state Senate seat, won by Taylor Remit. And he said he focused in his campaign on courting Latino voters. We have seen some declining poll numbers for the president among Latinos. How does that impact immigration enforcement operations and is a policy of mass deportation at odds with the politics of an election year? I don't think they necessarily have to be at odds. I do think that the conversation around ICE and the media focus on it over the last several months has been so negative that it has shifted the immigration conversation into a much more, you know, sort of... violent disorderly place. And I think part of the shift in Minnesota with bringing in Tom Homan is a shift that you're going to see around the country where immigration operations are still carried out. But it's less focused on creating a visual spectacle intended to send a message and more about just getting the job done. Because one thing that we know is in the Obama years, they still carried out deportations. They carried out more deportations than we saw under President Trump. The difference was they did it more behind the scenes. And the difference was the media wasn't necessarily out to attack and destruction. destroy ice the way they have been. But I think that the home and approach will take the immigration issue back to a place where normal people can see and appreciate. We still have tons of polling that shows us your average American wants to see illegal immigrants deported, but they don't necessarily want to see videos of sort of violent confrontations between ICE agents and illegal immigrants that were driven very heavily by a media that wanted to see that narrative. I do think one thing that Tony Fabrizio highlighted in that all hands meeting was Hispanic men are still a

persuadable group that Republicans need to focus on. But if that group's number one priority based on what they're seeing in news and all around them is immigration enforcement's gotten very scary and dangerous, that would be a challenge. If they see that Republicans have a plan for affordability, job creation, national security, security in their own communities that they can rally around, I think that they really can, you know, work towards a draw for that. Matt Whitlock, Senior Vice President at CRC Advisors and Republican Strategists, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. This is a blast. Nearly home. Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pro's number one most trusted app. If you're hearing me, I'm going to assume you're awake. And if you aren't, Because while you're snoozing, someone else might be finding your dream home. That's where Realtor.com comes in. With over 500,000 new real listings straight from the pros every month, that's a lot of chances to find the place you've been dreaming of. Whether you're searching for a two-story mid-century with a pool or a little extra space with a spa-inspired bathroom, Realtor.com can help you find it today. So quit hitting that snooze button. Realtor.com isn't sleeping on finding your dream home. and neither should you. Download the Realtor.com app today because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings, February 24 through January 2025. I'm your fearless leader, Clay Travis. This is Outkick the show where every day we talk sports, politics, and the stories that actually matter. Real conversations, no spin. Catch the show on YouTube. Outkick.com and wherever you get your podcast. This is Alex Berenson with your Fox News commentary coming up. It was four years ago today that Russia went on the attack. Invading Ukraine. Between the explosions and the air raids, people are trying to leave, and it's turned the highway west out to Poland, really into a traffic stop. People here didn't believe this was going to happen. Well, it's happening. Fox is Steve Harrigan was in Kiev that day. Nearly six million Ukrainians have left the country in the war. A UN human rights group has also counted 15,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine, 40,000 injured in Russia's war. And the estimates for military casualties, up to 600,000 dead or wounded Ukrainian soldiers, double that for Russia's military. The U.S. is brokering talks trying to stop the war. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told the World Economic Forum last month. I hope that we will find some, I don't know. Russians have to be ready for compromises because, you know, everybody has to be ready, not only Ukraine. But the last round of the negotiations last week seemed to go nowhere with both sides calling those talks difficult. I am surprised that the Ukrainians,

Certainly were able to stop the Russians way back when the war started four years ago, taking the country down. General Jack Keene is Fox News senior strategic analyst, a retired four-star general. He's also chairman of the Institute for the Study of War. Most of us thought they would do that, the Russians, that is. And they themselves felt they were able to achieve. the toppling of the government and putting the stooge government in themselves and taking control of Ukraine, and all of that would last at the worst two to three weeks. And here we are ending four years, and the Ukrainians have stood up against the Russians and literally have stopped them cold. I mean, the reality is the Russians own 20%. of Ukraine. And in the last two and a half years, they've only been managed to go from something like 18.5% to 20%. And that would tell you that the war after four years is somewhat stalemated. Russia does have momentum because they are conducted a very comprehensive campaign against the Ukrainian people. to kill as many as they can, to include women and children, obviously, and our institute for the study of war team just returned last week. They were on the front lines talking to the Ukrainian soldiers. They are very confident. The Russians have not been able to take any sizable amount of territory, and they are completely convinced that they're not going to be able to make any significant progress going forward. So the forecast would be the war will remain pretty much. as it is unless we're able to get some kind of a negotiated settlement. So what is the Russian strategy? Continue to negotiate, continue to promise that you will make concessions, don't make any concessions, but continue to negotiate, and then avoid because of negotiations. adverse consequences. General, you talked about being on the front lines in your institute looking at what Ukraine has done. How have they succeeded in holding the line against Russia? Russia has a bigger military. It was thought, as you said, that they would roll right through. What has Ukraine done so well? Yeah, it's a great question. And what they did and were able to surprise everybody is the sheer innovation of developing drones to scale and different kinds of drones, drones that conduct surveillance and also killer drones. that could have the capability to kill anything on the battlefield. So what the Russians who are conducting a limited offensive operation are doing simply this. They are moving at night in nine and ten-man groups to infiltrate Ukrainians' positions and then try to concentrate in those positions once they infiltrate and hopefully avoid significant casualties.

But it's not working because Ukrainians are killing somewhere in a neighborhood. It depends on the month between 25,000 and 40,000 Russians per month. That's killed and wounded. But in other words, obviously, if you're killed, you leave the battlefield. If you wounded, you also leave the battlefield. And that reduces the Russian force. But you made a very critical point. The Russians are a much larger country. They have more people. And the Russians just keep feeding more soldiers into that mix. They're not as well trained as they were a year or two years ago, and their morale is next to nothing in terms of what they're doing. And that's why their performance is also not up to par. However, the Ukrainians who are, yes, outnumbered and outgun, so to speak, but they have... They are fighting for their children for their way of life, and they have high morale, and they are steadfast. But they are willing to fight and die out there to keep the Russians away from their families. You know, they're getting less military assistance, Ukraine, than they had gotten. The U.S. doesn't provide the same kind of aid. under President Trump and they got under President Biden, though there can be weapons bought from the U.S. and paid for by NATO and other nations. How much more support does Ukraine need to keep this fight up? Without U.S. support and without the European support, eventually the Russians would overwhelm the Ukrainians, because Ukrainians... They cannot produce artillery ammunition yet. They cannot produce all of the capability they need, even for electronic and drone warfare. We are providing assistance there, too. They need our interceptors to shoot down the Ukrainian bombers that are delivering the cruise missiles that are so destructive. The drones are one thing, and they fly hundreds of those in night, but quite devastating are the cruise missiles that they launch from bomber aircraft. So if the support dried up... the casualties among the Ukrainian population would rise significantly. We've had all these rounds of talks, Russia and Ukraine, U.S. brokering them all this. How can there ever be a breakthrough on this land? You talked about how there's about, what, 20% of Ukrainian territory that Russia now controls? Ukraine doesn't want to just give that up, nor do they want to give up land. Russia hasn't taken yet, which I think is what Russia is demanding. So how is there even a possibility of a ceasefire here? I don't think so. And I really do think that time has run out on our patience with the Russians, or at least it should be. We have given them the better part of 13 months.

to make any concession. Their emissaries talking to one negotiators are always talking about making concessions. But when it comes to Vladimir Putin and the decision maker, he has not made one single concession of any consequence. And that is where we are. And I think what we should do is lower the hammer on him. And what am I talking about? We have taken down about 20 percent. of Ukraine's oil storage infrastructure in Russia. The Ukrainians have done that with the United States targeting cell, given the Ukrainians the targets on where those oil facilities are. If we gave them long-range tomahawks and other systems that can reach deeper into Russia, which Russia now has a sanctuary because they know what the limits of Ukraine's weapons are that they have, either given to them by the United States or the European or by what they've developed themselves. And in that sanctuary is where they have. where they are storing a lot of their oil, a lot of their military capability. The major drone factory that the Iranians developed is in that sanctuary beyond the range of our weapons. There's over 10,000 North Koreans that work at it. They produce the so-called killer drones that are flying 4 to 600 every single night. We could reach the air bases where the bombers are coming out of. that is so devastating in terms of the cruise missiles. All of that would be changed the battlefield and put huge pressure on Vladimir Putin if Ukraine had the long-range weapons systems to reach into what is now a sanctuary that's protecting those systems. And then certainly any additional sanctions, and we could put on them to include, and most significantly, China is buying most of Russian oil. And if we could shut that down, that economy would begin to fall very rapidly. Do you think President Trump would really do that? He's got to be frustrated by what has unfolded. And that fact that there really is no consequential progress, despite the fact he's being told, certainly, that talking to the Russian emissaries, they appear to want to make a deal. They want to make a deal. But where is the deal? General, what would Russia do if the U.S. allowed Ukraine and gave Ukraine through however method we gave them this kind of weaponry? How would Russia respond and would that be negative to the U.S.? I don't think it would be any different that we've already seen. They didn't want tanks on the battlefield. They said they would escalate. Nothing happened. They didn't want... high mars or attack them's on the battlefield nothing changed they didn't want f-16s on the battlefield they're on the battlefield and now we're going to give them longer-range missiles than what they currently have i don't see anything consequential coming from russia within their capability to do anything more than what they're doing

And certainly they're not going to escalate to this bluff that they constantly throw out there, that this could rise to the level of the use of tactical nuclear weapons. They know full well. If they use a tactical nuclear weapon inside Ukraine, that brings all of NATO into the war and something that Russia does not want and could not withstand, certainly. Looking at the crystal ball, are you and I, one year from now? going to be talking about the war still going on for five years? You know, it's a great question. And I think in my statement, there's some hope in it, is that I got to believe that we would not continue down this path we're on in tolerating Russia to continue using negotiations as a tactic to delay adverse consequence and that we would have lowered the hammer or Russia. would make some real concessions. I just can't see the fact that even six months from now, I don't see us in the same position we're in now. General Jack Keene, Fox News, senior strategic analyst, retired four-star general chairman of the Institute for the Study of War. Always great to have you on. Thank you for being here. I always enjoy talking to you and your audience. Thank you.

At Walmart, we're helping our associates build meaningful careers. One way we're doing that, investing $1 billion in training and education. Last year, more than 100,000 associates earned promotions. Combined with benefits like 401K matching and paid parental leave, we're proving that Walmart isn't just a place to work, it's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash grow at Walmart. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts. Subscribe to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. It's time for your Fox News Commentary. Alex Berenson. What's on your mind? Suddenly, warnings about cannabis are everywhere. At the beginning of February, researchers reported severe mental illness has spiked in young people in Canada alongside access to high-potency canvas. Then on February 9th, the New York Times dropped its support for full cannabis legalization. Writing that the New York Times has a, quote, marijuana problem, paper admitted cannabis addiction and psychosis have become a crisis. It called for a ban on THC extracts, a move that would recriminalize much of the legal industry. THC is the chemical in the plant that gets users high, and vapes using near pure hits of THC are now popular among users, and a big driver of industry profits. I don't want to say I told you so, but I did. In 2019, I wrote Tell Your Children, a book that meticulously documents the decades of research linking cannabis and THC to mental illness, especially psychosis and schizophrenia. The runway legalization of cannabis risks the mental health of teens and young adults, I wrote. and cannabis advocates and companies had spent a generation pretending the drug was a medicine, not a recreational intoxicant. That marketing trick encouraged its use in the most dangerous way, for conditions like anxiety and depression by people already at high risk of mental illness. When Tell Your Children came out in 2019, the industry tried to discredit it, as I expected. But I didn't expect the Times and other supposedly independent, fact-driven, legacy media outlets would help them. The Times refused to review, tell your children, even though I'd been a reporter there for a decade, and the book offered new research on an important issue. Reporters at the Times believed, wrongly, that many Black Americans were in prison for minor cannabis-related crimes. Therefore, cannabis legalization was an issue of racial equality. Any debate over it ended there, and anyone who said otherwise was a racist. So I took my lumps, and I waited for the truth to come out. Now it has. I suspect the real reason people are waking up to the psychiatric harms of cannabis is that they have seen the problems for themselves in their friends, their cousins, their siblings, and their children. We are a long way from undoing the mess of cannabis legalization and unrestrained commercialization. And President Donald Trump's decision in December to quote, reschedule cannabis, making it more accessible, is a step in the wrong direction. But it has been clear to me for years that the fight over cannabis is fundamentally cultural and medical, not legal and political.

A majority of Americans now support full legalization. Most of them do not use cannabis and do not realize how dangerous it can be. Only when they see for themselves or hear firsthand from people they trust that the industry has lied will support for legalization decrease. That cycle seems to be starting because the risks that I wrote about until your children are becoming too obvious to be ignored. So what happens next? Most likely not much right now. This particular wave of attention to the harms of cannabis will fade. The industry still has powerful momentum after decades of propaganda, paid and free, about the drug's wonders. But for the first time since I wrote Tell Your Children in 2019, I wonder if the pendulum is swinging back. Only time will tell. I'm Alex Berenson, author of the Unreported Truths, Substac. You've been listening to the Fox News Rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on Amazon music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.

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