Trump’s Chief of Staff Burned by Hit Piece

From the heart of our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., backed by the trusted voices of Team Fox, a clear, fresh voice, cutting through the noise to tell the truth. It's Guy Benson with Guy Benson. It is Tuesday, December the 16th, 2025. Welcome one and all to Guy Benson. I'm your host, Guy Benson. We're here for the next three hours together between 3 and 6 p.m. Eastern every weekday, here for the show. I am a Fox News political analyst. I'll be on the bottom line tonight with Dagan and Brian Brenberg, right around 610 or so Eastern Time. That's FBN. Here on the radio side, great lineup. We'll tell you about it in a second. First, a reminder that our online home is Guy Benson.com. Our podcast is free each and every day on demand. You can email us, GBS at Fox.com, whatever is on your mind. GBS at Fox.com. Follow us at Guy Benson on social media. We have Will Hild, joining us later this hour, on an interesting... sort of internal battle on the right with an argument that a traditionally right leaning group may be doing some harm interesting conversation there we'll talk to him cb cotton will bring us the very latest out of brown university on that baffling and strange investigation into the shooting over the weekend that killed two students as of right now still nothing And the big press conference we were promised yesterday, we monitored it. There's really no news there. Some more grainy partial shots of a masked person. So I'm hoping that they have better leads than we know about. We'll get the very latest from CB coming up in the next hour. Gordon Chang will also join us. A couple big developments involving communist China and a very, very, very odd story about wealthy Chinese people using surrogates here in the United States to have lots and lots of children born on U.S. soil. American citizens, these babies that are fathered by wealthy Chinese. So we'll get reaction to a number of those stories from Gordon Chang. Also, U.S. Senator Eric Schmidt in our final hour. He was in a highly classified briefing earlier today about those drug boat strikes from secretaries Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio will ask him about that controversy and what he has learned. That is all ahead. I want to open with some breaking news from earlier. A Fox News alert. This came from the president himself, President Trump. On Truth Social this afternoon, announcing my fellow Americans, I will be giving an address to the nation tomorrow night live from the White House at 9 p.m. Eastern. I look forward to seeing you then. It has been a great year for our country and the best is yet to come, President Donald J. Trump. So there's a lot of speculation here about what he might say. We're not exactly sure. I'm not...

convinced that this is him responding necessarily to any major crisis or news development it might just be a guess this is a guess that he wants to talk about in his mind and there's quite a bit of evidence too the economic progress that we have seen in the united states there have been some setbacks and mixed results of course and headwinds but As I keep saying, the administration has a pretty decent story to tell on the economy, and maybe the president wants to tell it here at the tail end of one year and set up the conversation with that megaphone that he has heading into next year and election year. That is possible, but with the president, you never know. But there will be, evidently, a presidential address in prime time tomorrow, 9 p.m. Eastern, and you can watch all of it on the Fox News channel. We will keep an eye on it. We will talk about it after it happens on our following broadcast. And if and when you do tune into Fox News, what a great segue into just a very quick thank you from all of us here. We have such a loyal audience at Fox, not just in terms of this show, and this show has really grown a lot, and we are very grateful for that. We've seen incredible growth as well on the digital side on the podcast. Thank you all for that. But zooming out to the network generally, Here's how the New York Post summarized it. Fox News steamrolled the competition in 2025, delivering its highest rated non-election year ever and cementing its dominance across cable while rival CNN and MS now plunged to historic lows. The Fox Corporation-owned cable giant averaged 3.2 million viewers in weekday primetime beating over-the-air NBC. according to Nielsen Media Research. So not just dominant in the cable space, but even beating NBC, which is an over-the-air network and available in many more homes. So just a chance to brag quickly on my colleagues and our leadership here at Fox, and it's only possible because of all of you. Thank you to the Fox News audience. Now, as we get started here today, I want to make the point that yesterday, the open of the show, For the better part of an hour, was about the terror attack down in Sydney, Australia over the weekend, as Jews were targeted and murdered as they celebrated Hanukkah at Pam Bondi Beach. Fifteen murder victims, dozens others hospitalized. Horrifying. And it was one of now a series of attacks from Islamists, radical Islamists, who hate Jews, who want to radicalize their brethren to kill Jews and others is such a key point here. Because the anti-Semitism cannot be escaped, it cannot be denied, it cannot be diminished. But radical Islamists don't only want to kill Jews.

They are very much on board with globalizing the Intifada. That's what happened in Sydney. As we've seen it happening all across the world, that is Jews specific. But this radical extremist, murderous ideology is a threat to far more people than only Jewish people. And it's not just isolated to one part of the globe. So I'm going to make a few of those points, and I'm going to jump from Sydney all the way to New York City, where there is a very disturbing video going around of Orthodox Jewish passengers on a subway train in New York, and they get harassed and then physically attacked by some passengers. The assailants were black men. They basically chase these Jews off the train, threatening to kill them. Here is a part of the melee in which at least one of the victims was choked. Cut five. I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I'll kill you, you heard there.

And the imams council nationally down in Australia says, well, actually Muslims are victims too, saying quite this was in their long statement. This is part of it. Quote, while this attack has targeted the Jewish community, it is in reality an attack on all of us, including the Muslim community. No. No, that's not it. I will. Point out, as an aside, one of the big heroes who helped disarm one of the gunmen at great risk to himself is a Muslim, good for him. What an act of valor and bravery. But... To try to broaden it out, here were Islamists murdering Jews in a country where anti-Semitic hate incidents have exploded in recent years. Before October 7th, there were like a few hundred in Australia per year. Still far too many, but a couple hundred. Since then, it has been thousands in 2024 and in 2025. And here we have... Muslim extremists, Islamists, killing Jews, and the National Imam's Council down in Australia says, well, this is actually an attack on all of us, including the Muslim community. That is not, if they're trying to talk about solidarity, that is not the way to do it in my mind. I will also remind people, remember several months ago where these Australian Muslim nurses got in trouble because they were saying on video that they wanted to kill Jewish patients? and they got fired, there was a big to do where Islamic groups, civil rights groups, who would say, oh no, it's very Islamophobic to conflate Islam, you know, radical Islam with Islam, any of this criticism islamophobic, those groups came out of the woodwork to defend the medical professionals who are on camera talking about murdering Jewish patients. Just spare me some of these lectures about, oh, it's really a, it's an attack on all of us. That's not often how these communities and organizations actually act or behave. And as I mentioned yesterday, sure enough, the government down in Australia that has twiddled its thumbs collectively, this is the labor left-wing government, as anti-Semitism has ramped up and up and up. Definitely on the left and within the Muslim community down there, this dirtbag alliance that I talk about of Islamists and Jew haters and leftists, as there has been this overflowing of anti-Jewish hatred and incidents in Australia, and it's been just kind of shrugged off or ignored or pandered to, including the recognition of a Palestinian state by the labor government. Now... that unfortunately the inevitability of violence and murder has taken place, the left-wing government and its leader of the prime minister, they are focused like a laser on the guns, the tools that were used to murder Jews, in a country that already massively restricts gun ownership. They're saying, oh, we're just going to gun control even harder now.

which is missing the point entirely, and yet they congratulate themselves like, oh, look, we're doing something. We're not like the Americans with their thoughts and prayers. We're doing something. Yeah, they're making it absolutely positively sure that innocent people cannot defend themselves. And they're going after the tools. We just talked about how Paris just canceled their New Year's Eve concert. Because they were worried that there were too many people that were going to gather as they have for decades, and you might have some people come do some terrorism, so we're just going to cancel the concert. They also restrict guns in France very heavily. So what have we seen Islamists do in Europe? They drive trucks and cars into Christmas markets and into celebrations like the one that just got canceled. In Paris, it's not about the tool. It's about the actual problem. It's about the people and the ideology carrying out the terrorist attacks. And again, it's not just about Jewish people. It's about Christians as well and any infidels. Non-Muslim infidels. We talked about briefly how German authorities disrupted an ISIS attack of a terrorist cell on a Christmas market in that country. We also just saw in Poland. Polish authorities foiled in Islamic State-inspired Christmas market attack plot as well. So there is a through line that runs through all of this. And we can either deny it and close our eyes and sweep it under the rug as attack after attack either happens or gets snuffed out, sniffed and then snuffed out. Because we don't really want to talk about it because it's very politically incorrect and very difficult and thorny. And I get it. It can be. It can be very sensitive. And you don't want to overreact. But I think that is blindness, willful blindness. So we're going to talk about what's actually happening here and abroad, because the theme could not be more obvious. It's the Guy Benson's show. We'll be right back. Not the same talking points here. Guy Benson. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FNRadio 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 older to order. Please drink responsibly.

I'm Guy Benson. One more related note on all of this. Matt Finn, our colleague, here yesterday, joined the show talking about this foiled terrorist plot out in Southern California for New Year's Eve, where left-wing terrorists were plotting to bomb five American companies and also federal agents. Jewish insider reporting that terrorist cell was also behind the extremist group. that had gone to a synagogue in L.A. to protest and disrupt and break glass and other things just a few weeks ago. It's the same people. They're emboldened and they are escalating the violence. We'll be right back on Guy Benson. Music. This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it. Okay. Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. Same issues, but with a fresh perspective. Guy Benson. Back here on Guy Benson, Guy Benson.com. That's our website. The podcast is always free every day on demand. I want to talk a bit about what's happening in the state of Minnesota. Will Kane, on his TV show, was talking about the fraud scandal that has rocked Minnesota politics, and we, of course, have been very much covering that story here as well. Kane... With his team was sort of mapping out some of the connections when it comes to Democrat politicians at the very highest levels in that state and the people who are responsible for these fraud, theft rings that robbed taxpayers of more than a billion dollars. And you now have various people, like these prominent folks, saying, oh, well, gosh, there's a handful of bad actors who took advantage of our generosity. This is what Governor Wall said the other day. I guess he's moved on from the full-blown identity politics and Trump blaming and getting all indignant about how great the Somali community is and trying to make it all about that. while not staring in the face the problem that they have in the state, who was doing the stealing, the scope of the stealing, and how, in fact, identity politics had been weaponized by the fraudsters in order to keep the grift and the crimes going. Successfully, by the way, they threatened Minnesota authorities saying, if you look into this too closely, we're going to call you racist publicly. And that seemed to at least work to an extent. And if it was just this small group of people, not representative of really anyone who are responsible, as Walls is now saying, it's like, well, then what? And how do you explain the fact that quite a few of the most prominent people involved in this were donors to top Democrats in the state of Minnesota? That seems like an awfully small world, doesn't it?

There was a political component to this where through political expediency and financial donations and identity politics and obsession, the ruling party in the state of Minnesota, Democrats, they were either willing to ignore or to slow walk investigations or to enable what was happening. where you have a billion and quite possibly billions walking out the door into these fraud rings. That we're supposed to be helping hungry people, hungry kids, and hungry communities and kids with autism. This is really low of the low stuff. And if you're going to have a very generous welfare state, which is what progressives in Minnesota are supposedly all proud of, This should be a five-alarm fire saying the credibility of us and our whole ideology is on the line. We cannot allow these things to happen, and yet they did. So coming back to Will Kane and what he did and what his team put together with Minnesota's leadership, these prominent Democrats in the state, the connections that they had, coincidentally, to a lot of the people who were running the fraud. Let's listen here to cut 19 first. Under the nose of Ilhan Omar, Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison. We see a web of connections between them and those directly involved in the fraud. For example, Ilhan Omar alleged enabling introducing the 2020 Meals Act, which was ultimately... subject to fraud. Held a campaign victory party at the Safari restaurant. That's where one of the men who run that restaurant has associations to the convicted individuals. And then there's Tim Walz. House Oversight Investigation role in his role as governor. Or Keith Ellison, the Attorney General, his job is to enforce the law in Minnesota. But instead, he's getting donations after meeting with the feeding our future representatives, the feeding our future, the biggest known yet, part of this entire fraud. Excuse me. theft ring. Are those all just very unusual, coincidental connections? I don't think so. The fact that you had people, they personally knew some of these top Democrats in the state. You had donations flowing, meetings, right? A.Keith Ellison meeting with some of these people getting big donations from them. This is Ilhan Omar's district and community where she and staffers had deep connections to some of the people involved in this wide-ranging fraud. And then you had the entire state government over which Governor Walls presides apparently doing an incredibly poor job of policing any of this. Like with... very expansive welfare states there must be strict adherence to eligibility and the opposite was happening here and again that was happening under threat

of racism accusations. So this is, as we've been talking about for quite some time, a scandal that I don't think is over. And Tim Walz can wave his jazz hands all over the place and talk about, oh, it's xenophobia against Somalis and our wonderful Somali community. And you had a member of the state Senate who's from that community saying, oh, Minnesota couldn't even survive without the Somali community. Not sure about that. They could certainly survive and thrive without the theft perpetrated by some of the members of that community. Of course not all. Then jazz hands can dance over here and talk about how Donald Trump is so dangerous and he called me a mean word. The R word, as I've said before, I wouldn't do it. I don't think it's appropriate. I also think the guy who calls ICE the Gestapo does not have a leg to stand on when it comes to inflammatory rhetoric. Like, give me a break. But all the jazz hand performance is to distract and deflect attention from what has actually happened here. And I am wondering. As this goes deeper, as more revelations come out, will taxpayers in Minnesota decide it is time to throw this man out on his rear end next year when he's going to run for re-election, he says again. Or will there just be a sense in a blue state that Trump is president and we're a blue state and even if they are robbing us blind, we're going to keep voting blue. We're going to take our... money that we have earned working very hard and we're going to give it to the government and we're going to just let it be stolen because we'd rather have that than a Republican governor. I guess we'll find out. We'll see if there's like any dignity or self-respect left in some of the electorate in Minnesota, given what has happened. And again, from what I've heard, we're not through this yet. We're not done. Oh, one more thing. Here's just like a little add on. I saw this yesterday on social media. This is from Alpha News, which is a right-leaning news organization out there in Minnesota. And this is specifically a subsection on social media where they keep track and keep tabs on crime in greater Minneapolis. Crime Watch Minneapolis. And this is an image submitted by a reader. This is from uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota. A McDonald's restaurant has now decided to lock their doors during business hours and monitor entry by customer because the area has become... That on the safe. Here is the message on McDonald's stationary that they posted in the window. Attention guests, effective Friday, December 5th, so this has been happening now for more than a week. Our dining room doors will be locked and attended during our normal business hours of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. to ensure a safe environment. We will deny access to any individual who we may consider a risk to maintaining a safe environment for our guests.

So I guess the crime has become bad enough in parts of Minneapolis that McDonald's, during the middle of the day, while they are open, will be locking their doors and having, I guess, someone like monitor, guest by guest, who they're going to let through the door. I'm not quite sure how that works. But evidently, the management at the McDonald's has come to, you know, their wits end. So this is what they've decided to do. And I wonder if this is something that might come up in a Tim Walz press conference where he'll look bewildered and gesticulate wildly and figure out a way that this is Donald Trump's fault as well. Again, at some point voters have to decide for themselves whether a status quo like any of what I just described to you is acceptable. Or if the more unacceptable thing is having politicians with the letter R next to their name in any positions of power. Like, well, you know, what are the tradeoffs? It's a mentality that I think is quite poisonous, but it has been tested a number of different places. Oh, and by the way, we might have time to get to this at some point later in the week. The Washington Free Beacon has quite an interesting new piece laying out the evidence, and there's quite a bit of it. Not speculation. It's not like racist claims, actual evidence that the aforementioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did at one point technically legally marry her own brother. I know that sounds very unseemly to talk about and something that some right-wingers might cook up because they don't like Ilhan Omar, but then you actually look at the evidence that has been compiled and you read this piece in the free beak and you're like, oh, well, is there an actual specific rebuttal to any of this? Or is this exactly what it looks like? So if we have time later on in the week, we will perhaps delve into that sorted subject. But since we're talking about Democrats in the state of Minnesota, I wanted to commend that free beacon piece to all of you. With that, we will take a break. When we come back, a guest on what might be seen as an internecine battle on the right, Will Hild, coming up after the break. Always Fresh, Always Fair, Guy Benson.

Back here on Guy Benson, glad to have you along. Joining us now is Will Hild. He is the executive director of Consumers Research, the nation's oldest consumer protection organization and has done a lot of work against sort of the wokeification of corporate actors and other organizations. We've talked about that work here on the show before with him. Will, welcome back to the show. Great to be with you again. Thanks for having me. All right. So you are now turning your attention to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and saying that they are part of the problem when it comes to woke policies in corporate America. I think that's maybe surprising to some people because the Chamber of Commerce, I think, in the public imagination, is a pretty right-leaning organization in a lot of ways. And so what's the beef that you have here? Why are you training some of your rhetorical fire on the chamber? Yeah, certainly. And I think you said it best, which is that a lot of people have the misapprehension of the Chamber of Commerce as being the defender of free market capitalism and free enterprise that it may have once been when it was founded by former president Taft many, many years ago. But the last 15 to 30 years, especially in the last five to six, they have become almost an arm of the Democratic Party. wing version of it or left side of it. What I mean by that is they are pushing some of the most egregious examples of far-left policy through corporate America. For example, DEI, the discrimination against whites and Asians and men in favor of groups that are supposedly underrepresented at different levels of employment or promotion, and the idea that you're going to apply some sort of corrective to that, often in the form of discrimination. And you have examples that the chamber has engaged in. In 2022, they bragged about giving $8.1 million of grants based on race, based on the owners of companies being black. They have incorporated into their programming people who advocate for race-based discrimination in hiring inventors, people like the Leadership Council for Legal Diversity. This is basically a corporate cartel on legal business that requires the law firms that they hire in order to get their corporate lawfare business to be engaging in discrimination. They've also pushed their members to take on incredibly costly net so-called net zero targets. This is the idea of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Maybe some people don't know what those mean in practical terms for consumers. Maybe that doesn't sound that bad. The key is that means higher costs for the prices and services that you pay for. This is not something that a free enterprise organization or certainly not a conservative one would be pushing if that's what they were.

And I agree with you that part of the reason we've trained our ire and our rhetoric and trying to highlight with this recent woke alert what the chamber is up to is I think they are gliding. You mentioned in the last segment the importance of credibility. And I think the Chamber of Commerce is now trading on credibility they no longer deserve, especially on the right side of the aisle. And so we wanted to highlight this for consumers to help them understand that when they see a business as a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Commerce comes out with some position. They should be very suspicious about their involvement in whatever issue it is because this has become a fairly left-wing organization. Okay, so a couple things here. Number one. You mentioned one example from 2022. Is it possible that the chamber, when Biden was in office, and it was the Biden administration and the Democrats were running Washington, that they kind of, and this is not a defense of them, but they kind of beat something of a retreat to play nicely in the sandbox with the people in power at the time and might be course correcting now that. Trump won the election, the Republicans control Congress. Are you seeing any evidence of a zig or a zag back toward the right, or are some of these patterns still continuing? Yeah, I think that's a great question, and this is something we've seen across the board in corporate America since Trump's election, is an effort to sort of tone down some of the more strident rhetoric they were using around DEI and some of their more egregious left-wing activities. And you're right. The materials and activities from the chamber that are in our woke alert are from, you know, two, three years ago. That said, one of the concerns that we have as a consumer advocacy organization is the number of companies that have been quoted, either off the record or, you know, sometimes on the record, saying that Trump's election or the changing political environment may change their rhetoric, but it won't change their activities. In other words, they're going to continue to push DEI and CRT and this stuff. And, you know, if a organization comes out and takes such a strident position on race and sex-based discrimination that they would literally be handing out money, based on people's skin color and bragging about it three years ago, unless they repudiate that position and say, you know, we were totally wrong for doing this. This was evil, and we're not going to do that anymore, it makes it less likely to me to believe them. In other words, if Kamala Harris had won, and we didn't find any more engaging in the DEI nonsense, then I can say, well, maybe they learn their lesson there. There's no incentive for them to be quiet about this. To your point, they're doing it, to the extent that they are being quiet about it or toned it down, it's purely out of self-interest to not become the target of the White House at the moment. And if that's the case, then all the more reason why they need to have attention shown on the fact that when they felt that it was in their political interest to engage in anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-male discrimination, and encourage their members to do so as well, that they were all happy to do so as long as they thought it was in their interest.

I think some of the identity stuff is concerning, and it shouldn't depend on which party controls the White House of how an organization like this, especially that is seen as free market and pro-business, how they decide to behave and message and that kind of thing. They were. very much supportive of the one big beautiful bill and President Trump's agenda on that. So I wouldn't call them left wing in that sense. But on the identity stuff, it's at least worth flying the red flag. And to have people wonder and in the business community asking and pressuring the chamber, you guys actually people who share our values, even when it's... thin times or thick times and is it across the board are you picking and choosing i think it's a worthwhile conversation to have which is why we were joined here by will hild on Guy Benson another hour coming up cb cotton next A new generation of conservative talk. Right here, right now. Fair, fun, and backed by the trusted voices and reporting resources of Fox News. Fox News. You're listening to Guy Benson. And now here's your host, Guy Benson.

It's a new hour here on Guy Benson, our second of three, Tuesday edition. Thank you for listening. Guy Benson.com podcast, always free, always on demand. Fox News alert as we headed to this middle hour, the Dow shedding 302 points at the close today in the red, the Dow finishing at 48,10014. Well, I was hoping that we would have some major updates to bring to you today on the Brown University shooter. But as of right now, we really don't. There was a press conference yesterday, not much there. I know there's another press conference scheduled for this afternoon as well. We'll keep an eye on it. But right now, it's feeling like some dead ends. Joining us is Brian Yennis, national correspondent here at Fox News, who's been covering this story. And Brian, it's disturbing enough that you had two young students shot dead in a classroom at an Kay Ivey League school and others wounded as well by this mass shooting. It is more disturbing that there is an unknown gunman. at large, and you have officials saying, well, there's no threat to public safety, but there's a mass shooter and they don't know who he is, and he's in the wind. None of this makes much sense to me. Am I overplaying how strange this investigation has been, or are you getting that sense as well? Guy, thank you for having me. Look, I think there is frustration among the locals here, the people you speak to and also press in the press room during those press conferences. that we're just not getting the information that we need at the time that it's happening. And I think this all stems from the fact that they got their initial person of interest that they thought they had at the hotel on Sunday morning that turned out to not be anybody that's involved with this situation at all. Paul Morrow, who's always on our network, actually had some good reporting on this and said that they were able to trace the fact that the first person of interest that they arrested on Saturday. was somebody who, you know, they traced his key card and they traced his whereabouts. And even though he had a couple of guns on him, he's somebody who he never left. the hotel during the times in which would put him at the site of the shooting. So look, the investigators will tell you that they are going step by step. They found they had evidence that pointed them towards the person of interest that turned out not to be, and now they're following new leads here. But from an outside perspective, you have a situation here where you have a major university with a ton of cameras. You've got a high profile case. And in this day and age, to not have the type of information, age, date, age or photos that could actually break this case at this point is frustrating for people. And, you know, there's also the fact that there seems to be some sort of tug of war here between...

the FBI and the local police as to who has jurisdiction and taking the lead. So it's been a couple of things, Guy, I think it's been the first we got him and now we don't. You've got the slow trickle of information and you've got a bit of a, seemingly a bit of a tug of war here with the officials about who's taking charge. And of course, there have been some lapses. Brown University did not have enough cameras inside of the engineering and physics building at the time of the shooting. You've had a situation here with the Brown University's own siren alert system, did not go off properly at the time of the shooting. And in fact, Brown University's first alert sent out to students didn't go out until 20 minutes after the shooting. And so there are a lot of questions and just simply not enough answers, Guy. Yeah, and, you know, you've got... potentially these different law enforcement organizations feuding over whose jurisdiction it is and kind of this turf war, which is never helpful, maybe helpful to the suspect who's still out there, but not helpful to actually resolving this thing. And the fact that we don't really even have a vague description of height, weight, race, potential age, like a lot of that stuff has been... missing. We know that the gunmen apparently yelled something before opening fire in this classroom, but they either don't know or won't tell us what he yelled. So there have been various reports and rumors about that, but we don't know what's actually true. It just feels like there's... so little information about any of this. It also seems very bizarre because this was not a two-second long attack, Brian, right? This was someone bursting in, opening fire, killing two people, hitting other people with bullets, and then apparently getting out of the building and off of campus without encountering security or law enforcement. at all, right? And the images that we've seen so far, I know they had a new one that they put out today, but they're all from these security cameras and many of them are from bad angles. The guy's got a hood on and a mask. Many of them are grainy or blurry. It doesn't seem terribly helpful up to this point. It just seems like there's this swirl of questions. And sometimes you at least start to get some concrete information. You can build off of that. I just feel like there's been a vortex where there's been almost no useful concrete information. And in some cases, wrong information conveyed to the public. And that might be contributing to a lot of the public consternation about this because ultimately, Brian, someone who went in and shot a bunch of people, is out there, probably, presumably still armed, and the people in charge of finding him seem to have absolutely no idea who he is or where he is, right? I mean, that's kind of where things stand at this hour.

Right, and I'll remind folks, because I had to be reminded of this as well. It took six weeks to find Brian Coburger in Idaho. So to give the police some benefit of the doubt here in their investigation, we have to keep that in mind. But, yeah, I totally understand and hear the frustrations here on the ground as well. It's fascinating that it's unbelievable, really, that the engineering and physics building, the doors were unlocked because it was final exam at the time. I don't know why the doors would be unlocked during final exams on the outside going in. but they were. And we keep getting a reference that the building's camera, the building was too old, and it just didn't have enough cameras inside. I'll also say that this engineering and physics building is on the edge of campus next to a residential area. Brown University is set in an urban setting here in Providence. So this building, it's not like this person of interest or this gunman had to walk through the heart of campus where there would... presumably be more cameras. So the videos that have been released in just the last hour, actually, by the FBI, they released a timeline of videos. Most of the videos are before the shooting, but there are a couple of videos. Well, and I do hope, Brian, that we get more answers because I know there's another press conference upcoming. We've got to take a quick break. Brian Yennis on this story for us. It's Guy Benson. I'm Guy Benson. So this story definitely raising some eyebrows, especially here in D.C. I'm a little baffled, honestly, about how this all went down. But the White House chief of staff, so President Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, apparently gave a series of interviews to a reporter named Chris Whipple at Vanity Fair. Which is, let's just say, not a conservative-friendly publication by reputation. The Hill, summarizing it this way, Vanity Fair's Chris Whipple spoke with White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, during each moment of crisis, 11 interviews in total during President Trump's first 11 months back in office. Susie Wiles was remarkably candid with Whipple about the inner workings of the Trump administration. This interview is getting a lot of attention. Her assessment of Trump 2.0 is not entirely glowing in the story. And keep in mind, she's Trump's current chief of staff, not former. She appears to have a good working relationship with the president. Just last week, Trump referred to her as Susie Wiles. In the Vanity Fair story, she describes disagreeing with the president at times, while indicating she doesn't think her role is to restrain the president, but to help facilitate his goals. Okay, I mean, that's fine. What exactly did she say? A number of quotes from Susie Wiles that strike me as, yeah, candid is one word, unguarded, maybe? Keep in mind, this is not a friendly publication. I think it's fair to call it a hostile publication. She gave this guy really extraordinary access. They did a whole photo shoot, and I will say I'm not exactly sure that I would call the photographs that resulted flattering. Here's one part of the New York Times describing.

this back and forth and the things that she revealed and the statements that she made clearly on the record because they are published under her name in Vanity Fair. On Trump, Susie Wiles says Trump, quote, has an alcoholic's personality. Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I'm going to say, but high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I'm a little bit of an expert in big personalities. Susie Wiles said Trump has an alcoholic's personality because he, quote, operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do. Nothing, zero, nothing. Now, Trump is sober. He doesn't drink. But that's still, I think, a very unusual thing to say. Even if you think maybe your boss has an alcoholic's personality for various reasons, I'm not quite sure that's the sentiment or the thought to convey out loud, especially to a reporter. On Vice President JD Vance, she said, JD Vance, quote, has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. On Elon Musk, formerly of Doge. a quasi kind of frenemy, sometimes ally of the president, while says Elon Musk is a, quote, odd, duck, who is not always rational. She described him as an avowed ketamine user. Some of his actions left her, quote, aghast. On the budget director, Russell Void. On the budget director, Russ Vought, she described him as, quote, a right-wing absolute zealot. On Attorney General Pam Bondi, Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Pam Bondi, quote, completely whiffed on the early handling of the Epstein File saga. Can I just point out, I don't disagree with that assessment? But again, that is a very negative review of the sitting... Attorney General from the sitting chief of staff at the White House, it just kind of feels, yes, frank, but also like dirty laundry. This is not some career in review book that Susie Wiles has written after she's left government. She's saying these things now about the administration and the people within the administration with whom she is currently serving. while describing herself, quote, I'm not an enabler. I'm also not a B word. I guess time will tell whether I've been effective. Fine. On dismantling USAID, no rational person could think USAID's process was a good one. Nobody. Again, I agree with that. Now, there was also a comment that she made about Ron DeSantis. So she had worked successfully with Ron DeSantis down in Florida. Then they had a big, pretty famous falling out. Quoting here, Susie Wiles went to work in 2018 for an ambitious gubernatorial candidate named Ron DeSantis. Trump urged Ron DeSantis, his protege at the time, to hire her.

She led the underdog campaign and candidate to victory. But afterward, Ron DeSantis turned on her, denouncing Susie Wiles publicly and bad-mouthing her privately. To this day, Susie Wiles doesn't know what triggered the governor's vendetta. Quote, I think he thought I was getting too much attention, which is ironic, she told me, I don't ever seek attention. And I would just say, and I don't know the backstory there, and I'm not going to theorize at all. But if you are insisting that a relationship went sour with a former boss, in this case, a very successful governor in Florida, because you're saying he was, like, jealous of all the attention you were getting, but it's ironic because you don't seek attention. If you are saying those things to a reporter for a huge profile piece in Vanity Fair with a photo shoot, there's something of a contradiction there. So while I think that in some ways Susie Wiles comes off well in the piece, and she is definitely giving some of her unvarnished thoughts here, I do question the wisdom of giving an interview like this to anyone, let alone to Vanity Fair. And then to turn around and say, oh, it's a hit job, which is what she tweeted today. Quoting, the article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House staff, and cabinet in history. Significant context was disregarded, and much of it, and much of what I and others said about the team and the president was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team. The truth is that the Trump White House has already accomplished more in 11 months than any other president has accomplished in eight years, and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of making America great again, exclamation point. She's saying they took stuff out of context and they left important stuff on the cutting room floor, so to speak, and they were sniping out good stuff and trying to make everything look negative and chaotic. Who could have seen this coming except for everyone? You let a Vanity Fair reporter, one of these journals, into your inner circle apparently, give him all this access 11 different times. You're talking to him on the record every month. with these behind-the-scenes details and your thoughts on your co-workers and different people in the administration and talking about Trump's personality being similar to an alcoholics and the vice president, being a conspiracy theorist, and going down the list, even if it's true. that this reporter turned this into some sort of hatchet job, and I'm sure that is true to an extent, that was 100% foreseeable. It was inevitable. Of course they were going to do this. What did you expect?

And I was told that Susie Wiles is like the adult in the room, keeping the trains running. I know President Trump's under some fire, including for me this week, about his awful reaction to Rob Reiner and his wife being murdered. And then the timing here isn't helpful where Susie Wiles is now complaining about a meany hit piece that she completely allowed to happen. That is a strange decision in my mind. And when she put out the tweet expressing how upset she was about the way the story turned out, Byron York, our frequent guest here, he said this in response, in terms of its understanding of the press, this is perhaps one of the most naive statements ever made by an official at the highest levels of the government. And unfortunately, I have to agree with Byron there. If she's really upset about how this turned out, and it was so unfair and manipulated and mischaracterized and all of that, I would say that Susie Wiles, who professes not to seek attention, has no one to blame for this vanity fair disaster, if this is what she thinks of it, no one to blame but herself. A very curious, head-scratching series of choices here. I've seen a number of top administration officials defending her. JD Vance saying, yeah, sometimes I can be a conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump Jr. coming out and saying, and we love Susie, I'm not passing judgment on her overall job performance. I think this, allowing this to happen, not a good look, not good judgment. Is that fair? I think it's fair. We'll be right back.

Guy Benson, sponsored by Previgin. Previgin, made for your brain. It's the halfway point of Guy Benson on this Tuesday edition. Glad you are listening. Guy Benson.com, the website, the podcast free every day. Joining us now is Gordon Chang. He's author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America. Follow him on Twitter or X at Gordon G. Chang. Gordon, welcome back. Thank you so much. I want to start with the plight of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, who's been convicted in a sham trial put on by the Chinese Communist Party. For those who don't know about Jimmy Lai and what has been done to him, can you just summarize this story for us? Jimmy Lai is a hero. He was a billionaire. He founded the Giordano clothes line and stores. And what he did was... He became very involved in the democracy movement in Hong Kong. He founded Apple Daily, the largest pro-democracy paper in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, the largest paper in Hong Kong. And he was an inspiration to many people, not only in that city, but elsewhere. Beijing decided that it wanted to get rid of him. Now, Jimmy could have left, had many opportunities to do so, but he stood and he stayed there because he felt it was important to make the point that Hong Kong people were determined to save their society. And so under the national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong, they brought charges. It was bogus charges. It was a sham trial. a kangaroo court in front of Stooges judges, and now he's been convicted. But I'm sure that China is going to release him because they don't want him to die in jail and become a martyr. He is very ill, and he is old. So this is a point where the United States is going to have to rescue him, because Britain, which has an obligation to him, because Jimmy's a British citizen, is not doing very much. which is, I think, a real shame on Britain. And you see the abuses from the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, and many people in this audience know, Gordon, that I lived there for the better part of seven years as a kid. I love Hong Kong. It's an amazing place. It is tragic and outrageous what the Chinese Communist Party has done to Hong Kong, and they have abrogated their obligations under this treaty. They handover in the late 90s. They were supposed to keep basically their commie hands off of Hong Kong for decades to come, and they just have not done that because communists lie. And part of what they have done in that process is to crush the freedom and democracy movement, Jimmy Lie being a hero of that movement. And his freedom, I think, might be secured not out of the goodness of the hearts of...

Xi Jinping or anyone else. But for the reasons that you mentioned, they might feel like it's in their interest not to keep him locked up. I think if he were younger and healthier, they would keep him behind bars or worse forever. But because of the status he's attained, because of his infirmity and his age, and if you look at the Trump administration, they're putting out statements. publicly and privately president trump apparently asking chairman she to release jimmy lye strong statement from Marco Rubio as well do you think that we will see the Chinese, for various reasons, relent. It sounds like you think that they will. I think that they will, because as you mentioned, President Trump raised the issue of Jimmy Lai with Xi Jinping. And as you also point out, the State Department has issued a strong statement after the conviction of Jimmy. Jimmy is more than just an individual. He's more than just an activist and more than just a newspaper person. He became a symbol for 7 million people in Hong Kong. And although the Hong Kong people right now can't do anything about this, Jimmy is very much in the forefront of the consciousness there. Hong Kong now has, as you mentioned, has basically become just another city in mainland China, although it had an obligation for 50 years to maintain a high degree of autonomy under the one country two systems formula. That is a treaty obligation. The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, but China has abrogated that, especially with the imposition of the national security law in June of 2020. So right now, Hong Kong is just as dangerous as any other city in China, maybe even more so, Guy. And the reason is, because things have been changing, people don't know where the line is anymore. And so because of that... it's much easier to get oneself in trouble in Hong Kong than in mainland China, where the rules are pretty clear. Yeah, I would not go there right now, personally, for a number of reasons. I was there about eight years ago, and I actually spoke. This was shortly after Trump won the first time, so I spoke to a pretty big crowd in Hong Kong at an event that was put together, actually in part by Karl Rove. Long story. But I was talking about the election and... fielding questions and i was invited to a subsequent briefing from some high profile hong kongers very concerned about what china was about to do in their minds on this front and i listened politely i thought it was maybe a little alarmist but they knew a lot more about than i did and sure enough within a few years everything they were worried about has happened and it's it's heartbreaking but not unexpected unfortunately if you look at the history of communism and the Chinese Communist Party, among others. Speaking of, I do want to turn to this, Gordon. I have been a strong supporter of ICE and deportations and immigration enforcement. It's been a long time coming. A lot of the sob stories that the media is putting out there, black context and key details and its activism.

However, I am concerned about this potential overreach. There's a man named Guan Heng, here in the United States. He's been detained by ICE. To me, this man is the veritable definition. of a political refugee. And if he is deported, this is a man who risked his life, helping to expose what the CCP is doing to the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang that many people have described as ethnic cleansing, as reprogramming, as genocide, vast human rights abuses against the Uyghurs. Muslims, actually, in Western China, this guy has helped expose what the regime is doing. And if he gets deported either back to China or to a nation that has a friendly relationship with China or owes China, that guy's going to end up in prison or he might lose his life. I wonder what you think about this situation involving Guan Heng. I feel like we ought to protect him. We absolutely need to protect him because we know about China's genocide in large part because of him because he had great risk to himself was photographing it and producing evidence. If Glon is actually deported, he will be tortured, and almost certainly he will be killed. This is the clearest case of asylum that I can think of. And so I hope that the United States grants him asylum. As you point out, there are a lot of asylum cases which are bogus. This one is certainly not. Finally, Gordon Chang, an absolutely bizarre story. I saw it in the Wall Street Journal. There's other reporting as well that billionaires and very rich Chinese people are apparently using surrogacy here in the United States and American surrogacy laws involving pregnancy and that sort of thing to actually create American citizen children biologically theirs, but born in the United States. On a scale that is, I just don't even know what to make of it, it's absolutely bizarre. There is one billionaire in China who has reportedly sired more than 100 babies who are now U.S. citizens using the surrogacy process, and I know a lot of people who have gone through this, and we have as well, and there's a backlog of surrogates for people Americans who need surrogates. If that's the way that they want to build their families, and I think maybe part of the backlog is you've got a bunch of rich Chinese people who are going through this process and throwing around a ton of money. These are Chinese citizens who are creating American citizen kids in some cases by the dozens.

What is going on here? Do you have any sense of, is this just like eccentric Chinese people, like individuals doing something for their own legacy project, or is this something that the Chinese government would be aware of? What do you make of this story? Yeah, I don't think the Chinese regime would be behind this or really aware of it. This is something which, as you say, is the most strange story of the year. And certainly, you know, with regard to China, I can't think of a more bizarre situation. What's going on here, I think, ultimately, and this is part of a bigger context, and that is that China's... billionaires and its rich are trying to leave China and trying to create some sort of anchor in the United States. And this is because of extreme pessimism in Chinese society right now. So this is part of that broader story. But this is one individual who was taking it to the extreme, as you point out. And this is going to be something where the United States is going to be looking at very, very closely. Because although other people have not gone to this length, They have also abused American rules to create this sort of base in the U.S. Can I ask you, because this may not have any direct connection at all, but one thing that cropped up in my mind, as I was reading this story, and you're right, it is beyond strange. There's something that definitely feels sinister and unethical about it and very suspicious, even if it's... For the best possible reasons or intentions, it's still very odd to me. But regardless, because you have certain very rich Chinese people, who are going through the surrogacy process, creating American babies born here who are biologically their kids. I just wonder, is there any tie-in potentially to the one-child policy, very draconian, really awful, that created a lot of misery, tons of abortions, lots of girls abandoned, possibly millions of girls, abandoned, and, of course, female babies aborted? under that system over many, many years, is there a one-child policy vestige here that might be playing into this kind of impulse A and B, as we look back on the one-child policy, because the Chinese regime felt like there were just too many people and there was too much procreation, so they put a hard cap on it, resulting in all those terrible dystopian things.

Is there a consensus even within China about the legacy of one child? The consensus is that the one child policy was overdone and was carried on long after it was, should have been ended. Right now, China actually has a three-child policy, but it doesn't really matter. China could have a 27 child policy. The Chinese people are not procreating. China's total fertility rate, which is essentially the number of children born to females who have reached. childbearing age is 1.0 for last year. You need to have 2.1 for replacement. And some people believe that the TFR is actually below 1.0. And given the trend, it's been dropping very fast in the last three, four years, which means China could end up somewhere with 0.7, maybe 0.8, which would be the lowest in the world. So everyone realizes that the Communist Party just completely failed to understand what was going on. China, by the way, could lose three quarters of its population from now until the end of the century, which shows you how devastating the one-child policy is. You know, in terms of the connection between the one-child policy and the story of surrogacy, I don't think there's a tie-in. But, you know, it is, as you say, so bizarre that anything is possible, guys. So I'm not sure that I could really say anything definitive about that. But the one-child policy we can definitively say was that perhaps the greatest mistake any government has ever made. Very quickly, Gordon, and finally I saw a story about an American company, I-Robot, that makes the Rumba and other technology. They're going under, and it looks like some Chinese forces are coming in to sort of pick up the pieces in bankruptcy. And some people are saying that Chinese dumping and IP theft played a role in that bankruptcy, and this was a backdoor way to then go and acquire a bunch of technology through this manipulation. I'm not sure if you've followed that very closely, but I just feel like... Americans need to pay a lot of attention to what the Chinese government and their various proxies are up to because Chinese are, they're playing for keeps here. Yes. Well, I-Robot is the victim of rampant intellectual property theft, which is the reason why it is in dire straits. So this is another story of American technology stolen by China. You know, and one can say, well, these are just mobile vacuum cleaners. But they did this, for instance, to Nortel, the Canadian networking company, which was a leader. They've done it to companies with extremely important technologies. So this is, as you say, we cannot allow this to continue. Gordon Chang is author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America. You can follow him on social media at Gordon G. Chang. Gordon, thank you very much for your time.

Well, thank you so much, Guy. And Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you as well. When we come back, a very Merry Christmas, for conservatives in South America, a big election result this week to tell you about. That's next. Miss a minute. Miss a lot. Guy Benson. Back here on Guy Benson. Another turn to the right in Latin America. In Chile, the voters tossed out the socialists in very dramatic fashion. Here's how the Wall Street Journal editorial board talks about the recent election that just happened a few days ago. Quote, it's a bad democratic season for socialism in Latin America, which means the tide of leftist violence and economic decline is going in reverse. The latest evidence is the landslide. Presidential victory on Sunday by Chile's Jose Antonio Koss of the center-right Republican Party. Mr. Kost, who ran on a platform of faster growth, fiscal responsibility, safer streets, and ending illegal immigration, routed leftist Jeanette Jara, 58% to 42%. Chile follows Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Honduras in rejecting hard left presidential candidates since 2023. So much for Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution sweeping the hemisphere. By the way, of course, Venezuela. can't actually turn to the right because there's an illegitimate regime there right now. But other countries have shed leftist leadership. And in many cases are thriving, especially in Argentina, where Javier Milei is popular. He's succeeding. His party just won their midterm elections recently. And now we see a rightist candidate also winning by... a huge margin down in Chile. The editorial board says it's also worth noting how the failure of Venezuelan socialism has contributed to the continent's right turn. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants have fled to Chile from Nicolas Maduro's dictatorship, contributing to a sense of lawlessness. Mr. Koss promised to fortify Chile's borders against the influx, which may sound familiar. For his part, Javier Milei also welcoming the election results in the neighboring country, tweeting the left retreats, freedom advances. So congratulations to the people of Chile for rejecting socialism and left-wing rule in their elections just a few days ago. Final hour of Guy Benson coming up next. U.S. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri will join us when we come back.

Raise your glass to Guy Benson Happy Hour. Brought to you by the Finnish Long Drink. Finland's most popular alcoholic beverage is taking America by storm. Visit the longdrink.com. And now, here's Guy Benson. Time for the happy hour here on the Guy Benson. Tuesday on the program. So delighted that you're here. Guy Benson.com. That's our online home. Lots of content there, including the free podcast, which is the whole show, every day on demand, no charge at all. Guy Benson.com, Fox Newspodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be on the bottom line tonight as a guest near the top of the show just after 6 p.m. Eastern Fox Business Network. Hope to see you there. On the radio side of the world, this hour brought to you by the Finnish Long Drink. Excellent, really delicious, but it is an alcoholic beverage. So please drink responsibly, 21 plus only, thelongdrink.com. Well, joining us now is U.S. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri, and Senator, it's good to have you back on the show. It's great to be with you. By the way, I love that you have a show entitled to Happy Hour, and sponsored by... an alcoholic beverage company. I love that. And coming from Beer City, USA, and St. Louis, I can appreciate that. You can endorse it. Well, I love that. It's our final hour. Our third hour is the happy hour, and the long drink has been a great sponsor now for years. And I would just encourage people to, perhaps, while drinking responsibly and being 21 years of age or older, perhaps supplement some of their beer consumption with some long drink as well. They can live happily together. So appreciate the plug, Senator. Let's turn to something that is a very sober, very serious matter. It's these strikes against drugboats that the Trump administration has been engaged in now for months. I know it's been controversial. Here is what the Secretary of Defense, now the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth had to say about this earlier, cut 16. Also going to tomorrow allow the Hask and Sask to see the unedited video of the September 2nd, alongside with Admiral Bradley, who has done a fantastic job, has made all the right calls, and we're glad he'll be there to do it. But in keeping with longstanding Department of War Policy, Department of Defense Policy, of course we're not going to release a top secret, full unedited video of that to the general public. The Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio also commenting on this cut 15. Provide updates on this counter-drug mission, which is focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans. And this has been a highly successful mission that's ongoing and continued, and we're... pleased to be here today to update Congress on how that's developing and how that's moving forward. As I said, I believe it's our 22nd, 23rd such engagement, certainly been at least the fourth or fifth that I've been involved in, and those will remain and be ongoing. All right, so we heard there from Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, Senator. They were on Capitol Hill. They have briefed one or both of them, members of Congress in both houses, in both parties, multiple times about what's happening.

the intel behind these strikes, et cetera, still controversial, constitutionally, operationally, right? There are critics all over the place. What is your view on these strikes? What can you tell us about the briefing beyond what is classified, obviously? Well, I thought I'll start with the briefing. The briefing I thought was very informative. I think the biggest takeaway is they really walk through methodically. sort of the decision tree on when to take out which boats and why. They're not all taken out through kinetic strikes. Some of them are, in fact, the Coast Guard will, you know, detain and confiscate. That is still happening. That's happened before. But I think it's also true that there's been a very big deterrent effect now because of these strikes. And I think to take a step back into the larger picture, this is really part of how the Trump administration and I think foreign policy realists are kind of... pivoting from a wandering foreign policy that saw a lot of our assets and concerns halfway around the world, and they refocus on the homeland in our western hemisphere, right? So you have 100,000 Americans were poisoned and die every year. People have talked about fentanyl. They've talked about drugs over the years. But you really haven't seen a concerted effort that includes our military of taking out the cartels, which have been designated as terrorist organizations, to take them out because of the role they play in that supply chain. And so from a legal perspective, I reviewed the 40-page-plus... a legal memorandum from the Department of Justice about this. And the president has been delegated the authority by Congress to designate terrorist organizations. He's done that for a handful of these cartels. The intelligence then informs what's happening on these boats and where they're at. And then if they, you know, if they determine that they are obviously on their way to poison Americans, they have every legal right to blow my law. Now, you might want to have a political argument about that. or a discussion about priorities about that. But the Democrats call of reflexively saying this is a war crime and this is illegal action, that's patently false. The United States of America has every right to do it. He is doing it. I think it's a good thing that we're doing it. I think we're sending a message and saving lives along the way. And I think the Democrats are playing a very, very dangerous game here by effectively asking service members to violate the chain of command and selling distrust among the American people for something that's been done before. I mean, not to, you know, to go back into ancient history guide.

I mean, Barack Obama used drone strikes, again, halfway around the world, including killing American citizens. You didn't see any of these people talking about it then. So I just think it's sort of the height of hypocrisy. It does seem to me, and this is at least my impression, because I've only followed this story a little bit, right? Because there's just so much going on. But it does seem to me... that once these briefings started to happen on Capitol Hill, where the intelligence was shared, at least some of the volume got turned down on this notion that perhaps these were just innocent fishermen getting blown up because of mistaken identity or something. It did seem like there was at least an idea that, okay, they absolutely have confirmed these are definitely cartel drug runners. When you were briefed, was this bipartisan? Were there Democrats in the room? Today, the briefing was an all-Senator briefing, which is kind of rare, although there had been briefings, as Secretary of Marco Rubio mentioned, for weeks, if not months now, about the activity, and in fact that this was guided by intelligence. I think you're probably, honestly, being a little bit more generous than I would be guide. I think what this really comes down to. As the Democrats continue to search for some front where they can break through as relates to their Trump Drangement Syndrome and everything opposing everything that's out of Trump, in particular interest on Pete Hegseth, they were unsuccessful. I mean, it was a tough fight in defeating his nomination. And I think their sort of sour grapes continues. And so to the point where they went, had a recorded video. asking service members to disobey orders. Right, no, no, and I get that, and I understand there's a component here definitely highly political. I'm just wondering, in the room today, if, let's say, not every single one of your colleagues probably showed up, but if a bunch of them showed up across the aisle, and this intelligence was being very meticulously... sort of revealed and walked through on a specific level, did you get any sense that at least some of the concerns that Democrats have been talking about were allayed at all? Like were Democrats saying, okay, well, we still might be worried about X, Y, and Z, but at least we're more convinced that... You guys are taking out definitely guilty parties here. Did you get any sense of any movement, I guess? Well, it should be very clear and obvious. I've not seen, as of the time we're talking, I've not seen a lot of comments of how Democrats... what their impression of it was. My guess is that the same loudest voices that have been complaining will continue to complain because either they don't like the mission or they don't like the actors, you know, that are declaring that this is our mention principally President Trump and Pete Exeter. But to answer your question, they, I mean, it was very detailed as far as how they're, how they're obtaining this intelligence.

and then how that guides the decision tree of when they have the vote. And I guess the best way to put it, this isn't like some like Google Maps and you try to find a boat somewhere and then we blow it out of the water, right? And the description of these things is fishing boats by one reporter last week who was asking about this is comical. These are, these are cartels. that are brutal. They rape, they murder, they have zones of control, not only in Mexico, but into the interior of the United States. Effectively what's happened now, the southern border can closed guy, they're in the high seas, they're on the high seas, and we're now making progress, so not as many of them are on the high seas. You combine that with a very important effort that's taken place. with China to have the precursors for fentanyl blocked and not actually make their way to Mexico. I think in a month or two, you're going to see, well, you see it right now, but I think the American people will be more obvious. Plus the closed border, right? The closed borders part of this, too. Correct. You close the border, so then they go on the high seas, and now you're blowing boats out of the water to protect the 100,000 Americans that are dying every year from overdoses. So that's tangible, it's actionable in our own hemisphere. It's clearly in the core national interests of the United States of America. And like I said, you combine that with the efforts in China to prevent the precursors for fentanyl ever coming across the Pacific. That's real progress. One more point on this, and it's one component of this larger debate, but Democrats want to release a specific video of a so-called double-tap strike, where one of the boats was hit, and then it was hit again because there were survivors, or Democrats are saying the whole goal was to just kill everyone, so there would be no survivors, and there's been a big... food fight about what actually happened there and was that a war crime and you heard some reference to that in the sound bite that we played earlier this segment what can you tell us about that particular incident because it feels like that's the one a lot of people are seizing on and americans will at least hear some account of what happened or some versions of it and say oh that does seem potentially troubling based on what you know senator what's your impression In that particular instance that they seem to seize on, the individual was seeking, well, the individuals were seeking to continue their mission. And so you've got to remember, the effect here is to destroy the infrastructure. So the boats that are proceeding. And so they were seeking to continue their mission. And I guess, and I would say that one of the reasons why this is so disappointing on behalf of the Democrats, there is at least one other instance. where, in fact, there were survivors that were rescued because they were no longer a threat. They were no longer trying to continue their mission. And so this is not some indiscriminate effort. But, again, I think that just kind of shows what they're really up to here, which is to try to sow doubt, to try to politically damage Pete Hegseth, who they never liked in the first place. So they're being, I guess the takeaway is they're being very meticulous and deliberate about which boats.

And then to make sure those boats are actually taken out on their way to either other Caribbean, other islands to make their way to the United States or to meet up with other vessels or directly to the United States. So that is one thing I think that today, for sure, was made very clear. So if anybody... Talking about ambiguity about how they're making these decisions based on real intelligence, that would be false because that was made very clear today. Senator, I've got to take a break. When we come back, I want to turn to some other subjects, including health care and judicial nominations. Eric Schmidt is a Republican senator from Missouri, our guest here on Guy Benson. More of this conversation as soon as we come back. New Talk for a New Generation, Guy Benson. We're back. It's Guy Benson Happy Hour. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri, kind enough to stick around for us. All right, Senator, I want to move on to this. You're a member of the Judiciary Committee. You have a legal background, of course, in Missouri. And I posed this question last week to your colleague, Senator Ernst from Iowa. Ed Whalen, who's a conservative, Rights of National Review, Court Watcher, very knowledgeable about these issues. He expressed a concern that there are dozens of judicial vacancies right now with no nominee at all from President Trump. These are federal judicial vacancies across the country. And in many of these, as I just said, President Trump and his team have not yet made a nomination to fill those crucial lifetime appointments. And it's not just in states where there's a blue slip issue with Democratic senators. A lot of these open seats, so to speak, these open judicial seats, are in red states with two Republican senators. Are you satisfied with the pace coming out of the White House on that front? Because to me, it seems like a no-brainer slam dunk priority that... everyone involved at the White House and in the Senate Republican majority should be coordinated on and gunning for maximum efficiency here. Yeah, I agree. I do. I am satisfied with it. I guess I can speak to my own personal experience. In Missouri, we had four vacancies on the Eastern District of Missouri, so Missouri has the Eastern and Western District. Those four were the first four filled. Senator Josh Hawley and myself had broad agreement. We worked with the White House. We got those names. Actually, all four of them worked in the Attorney General's office when I was Attorney General. So I could personally vouch for them. Their great judges, President Trump now will have seven of the eight appointees in the Eastern District. And now you include that with a vacancy now we have on the Eighth Circuit. We have also one in the Western District that's going to be moving forward to. So I guess I can only speak. We were ready to roll. I was very, I mean, obviously with my background, very committed to this process. So I can't speak to what's happening in each one of those states, but I do know the White House is working very diligently to work with the senators from those states to fill these vacancies because I can tell you, when I was Attorney General, we brought the, you know, student loan death forgiveness case that we won at the Supreme Court.

some of the vaccine mandate case that made it all the way of the Supreme Court, we won, the censorship case. Having judges who actually view the law as it's written and interpreted as it's written out how they wanted to be was critical to that success. And President Trump now has another run at this for four years, and we cannot miss any opportunity because I saw what was like in the last months of Biden's presidency. The people he was putting up for these lifetime appointments were terrible. Like they had no experience. not qualified, they were activists. And so we've got a chance, I think, again, to kind of remake the judiciary in the right way, and we should take every opportunity and move expeditiously. Finally and quickly, we've seen a bill over on the House side from Republicans when it comes to health care. We know the Democrats' position is just blindly extend the Obamacare temporary, quote-unquote, emergency, quote-unquote. subsidies from the COVID era. They created Obamacare. They created these cliffs and these deadlines and these very expensive subsidies, including to rich people, going directly, in many cases, through the insurance companies, rife with fraud and waste. We've talked about that here on the show quite a lot. The Republicans need to have a policy and messaging rejoinder. If you had a minute... to pitch the GOP side versus the Democrat talking points. What would you say? Well, let me, I will get there. But I think it's important to point out, Obamacare, these subsidies, they all did it with just Democrat votes. They never wanted Republican input, which is why some of these are so terrible. Insurance companies have gotten rich. Healthcare has gotten way more expensive for everybody because of the Democrat plans. And the COVID-era subsidy they're talking about is one-half of one percent of everybody on the exchange. So do we need to have a plan? Absolutely. And I think for us, it's a reform agenda. It's putting money in the pockets of patients, not insurance companies. It's greater transparency and giving more options. One of the great lies of Obamacare was that if you liked your doctor, you could keep it. That's not true. Employers dump those policies. People were given some bronze plan on Obamacare. It just hasn't worked. It's become unaffordable. So I think we've got to empower consumers. to make their own decisions through health savings accounts, that will bring down costs. That's the most important thing we can do right now, is have a marketplace where costs are front and center. Consumers are making their decisions, and we reform the disaster that's been Obamacare. Republican Missouri-U.S. Senator, Eric Schmidt, our guest, on Guy Benson. Merry Christmas, Senator. We'll talk soon. Merry Christmas. Take care. We'll be right back.

A fresh perspective on the topics of the day. It's Guy Benson. Earlier in today's show as we opened the program, it's a very, very busy news week, not slowing down for the holidays at all. I had some thoughts on a number of recent developments. If you missed it, here's part of the opening monologue. Radical Islamists don't only want to kill Jews. They are very much on board with globalizing the Intifada. That's what happened in Sydney. As we've seen it happening all across the world, that is Jews specific. But this radical extremist, murderous ideology is a threat to far more people than only Jewish people. And it's not just isolated to one part of the globe. So I'm going to make a few of those points, and I'm going to jump from Sydney. All the way to New York City, where there is a very disturbing video going around of Orthodox Jewish passengers on a subway train in New York, and they get harassed and then physically attacked by some passengers. The assailants were black men. They basically chased these Jews off the train, threatening to kill them. Here is a part of the melee in which at least one of the victims was choked, cut five. I'll kill you, you heard there. So this will be a problem. Touch me, girl. I'll kill you. I'll kill you, you heard there. So this was caught on video. It went viral. This is... visibly Jewish people being attacked in the subway in New York City. And I bring it up not just to highlight that this is really a scourge that is all over the place. And I think we have seen a deliberate normalization of attacking Jews. And for a lot of people, it's quote unquote, about Israel, wink. But it has been a drumbeat of misinformation and propaganda against the Jewish state, our ally. And then it gets expanded. And inevitably, Jews are targeted, harassed, assaulted, killed. And what was the response? This is what I want to talk about here. What was the response from the top law enforcement officer in the state of New York, Letitia James? who has been in some hot water herself for allegations over mortgage fraud, who, of course, was fanatically focused on President Trump and figuring out ways to try to bankrupt him and to sue him and that crazy civil case that she pursued using novel theories that just seemed totally politically motivated as someone who promised to go after Trump. On the campaign trail, even some left-leaning legal analysts saying, yeah, this is an incredibly weak case, this is punitive, this is driven by politics, and not the law. That same Letitia James, reacting to the video that I just played for you, let me quote, in New York, she wrote, we reject Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

New Yorkers know the way forward is through solidarity in our communities and rejecting hate. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. That entire monologue and all of today's show and all of everyday show, available online at Guy Benson's show.com. Free podcast, no charge on demand. Guy Benson.com, Fox News Podcasts.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, the home stretch. A wedding recap for the ages. That's next. In the swamp, not of the swamp. Guy Benson. And now it's time for your favorite segment of the day. Home Stretch. It's basically the only segment I'm on, so I've declared it the audience's favorite segment. Guy Benson. Home Stretch, Tuesday, Guy Benson. I'll be running off to join Brian Brenberg and, of course, Dagan McDowell on the bottom line. FBN coming up just a few minutes after this program ends. See you over at Fox Business. Guy Benson.com, the website here, podcasts always free, of course. So yesterday... I was back here on the program after a whirlwind weekend wedding in Mexico, celebrating Justin and Hannah. Christine, as she often does, took some extra vacation and was off yesterday. We can ask her about how that went. I will simply note... that during our home stretch yesterday, where I did not really give away anything about the home stretch material to come today, likely tomorrow, maybe later in the week as well, I did shamelessly plug. My Instagram, Guy Benson, my personal Instagram. You can follow the show as well, Guy Benson's show, both on Instagram and Twitter or X and on Facebook while you're at it. And then personally, I'm Guy Benson because I posted some photos from the wedding, including of yours truly and Christine, i.e. Cookie, I.C. Diddy. Then also Justin and a few scenes, vignettes. from our trip to senior frogs, which is an entire separate home stretch, I promise you that. And I got dozens, maybe hundreds of new followers from this audience, because people were rushing to social media. Out of curiosity, it turns out in many cases, to see what cookie actually looks like. And I got lots of comments and DMs and notes from listeners just reacting with surprise to some extent.

about the photos. One person commented that they expected Christine to look like Susan Estrich, which is a throwback for the Fox News audience, if you remember that name, but I got a few chuckles from your responses, Guy Benson, if you want to check that out and throw me a follow. All right, Christine, you are back. More importantly, Justin... The groom is back. Now, he was already married, as we had discussed previously. They officially tied the knot a few weeks before the ceremony, but this was the big event, relocated from Jamaica because of the hurricane, to Mexico with about a month and a half to spare. Very few guests apparently dropped out. Full House, big crowd. Justin, overall, as you and Hannah were talking about all the festivities on Sunday and yesterday as you were returning to the New York area, what's the general consensus? What's the verdict? How you feeling? So obviously it was a very quick turnaround. We had a lot of stress involved in this wedding process. And if you asked her, she would say the same thing I'm about to say is we would go through it all again if we had the weekend that we just had. I mean, everything was absolutely perfect in our eyes. I think all of our guests had a really good time. We had the time of our lives. Anna looked beyond. Perfect. The ceremony was unbelievable. The weather held up for the most part, which I think maybe we can get to and Christine's role in the wedding. But everything was... Simply put the wedding of our dreams. Like we could not have axed for anything more. Oh, good. Well, that's exactly what you want. And there were so many X factors and so many obstacles and complications along the way. And as I told you and your family, Justin, on Friday at the welcome party and dinner on the beach, bonfire is like, listen, I don't really see any evidence. that this was thrown together last minute. If I didn't know the whole backstory because we talked about it a lot here on the show, I would have just strolled into this event and being like, oh, yeah, this is the wedding. It was always supposed to be like this, right? That first night, now there was rain in the forecast, a lot of it, for Friday and for Saturday. So I was worried for you guys. We show up on Friday evening. Bonfire's going, the bar is open, there's like the taco station with the guy making fresh tacos. The weather was perfect, the music was playing, and it was just like, oh.

It was meant to be this way. That was the vibe I got right out of the gate on Friday. Yeah. And the weather, like you said, it was absolutely perfect on Friday. We started to see them setting up the day of. It was weird because... Where we had the bonfire was where we were having the ceremony the next day. But on Thursday night, they had a ceremony for just a couple. They didn't have any guests. So it looked really small. And then when we saw the bonfire setup, we realized, oh, they could absolutely handle the people that we have coming to this. And it surpassed all of our expectations. The music was great. The food was great. It was just like someone was looking out for us because of all the stress that happened to get us to Cancun that weekend, despite all of the weather that was supposedly going to be a problem, held off until... late into that night when there was like a vicious thunderstorm. Right, which we talked about here on the home stretch yesterday because I slept through every minute of it. I had no idea that happened. No clue. The next day people were owing and awing about how loud it was. I was like, yep, I don't know. But yeah, there was a lot of drama on Friday night, apparently. There were some over-served guests. Not sure if Cookie was one of them. There was a big storm and all of that. But then the skies cleared. Saturday arrived, and at some point you guys were confronted with a new choice and stressful decision. Now, this came after Christine and I took our field trip to Signor Frogs, and we will, again, hold off on those details for another day because we're trying to keep it classy here when we're talking about the wedding. But Christine, I'll just put it this way, had consumed some alcohol. at senior frocks we'll leave it at that so i then got a phone call somewhat panicked from her And the call kept dropping. I have no idea why she was calling me because I had no control over anything at all. But you guys had to make a decision about whether to move the wedding, not the full thing, not the ceremony, but the reception indoors or roll the dice and keep it outdoors. So talk about that decision, why it came up, and then what you guys chose. First off, it was very stressful because after the Friday night bonfire, Hannah and I went to separate rooms and were not going to see each other until the ceremony. So we were texting just to make sure we were avoiding each other through the day, but had no communication outside of that. As we're taking pictures about an hour and a half before the ceremony, Hannah's getting ready. I'm taking pictures in the lobby with my groomsmen.

She calls me panicked, saying our wedding coordinator needs us to make a decision in the next 20 minutes because the forecast says rain, the humidity is really high, and for the reception that was starting at 6 o'clock, we needed to see if we were going to do it outside as planned or move it into a ballroom. I'm still taking pictures. We're kind of under the clock. I'm freaking out. My dad is right next to me. He says, okay, I'll go check out the ballroom, see what's happening. As that's going on, Cookie is running into the lobby straight from Signore Frogs and sees me in a panic. My dad trying to calm me down. She asks for the lowdown. I tell her what's going on. She says, oh, okay, no problem. I'll check out the ballroom too. So she goes with my dad, who she became very good friends with. Oh, Cookie and your parents are like BFFs all of a sudden. Absolutely. They were inseparable. Everywhere I turned. It was your dad, your mom, like the parents of the groom, and then cooks. She texted me the morning of the wedding saying, I had a wonderful walk on the beach with your mom this morning. This is great. So I fully trusted her in that moment. Again, what more can I say? So her and my dad go, they come back maybe 10 minutes later. Christine, like, centers me up and says, hey, it doesn't look good, but they promise they can make it better. And I'm going to be on their butts to make sure it looks like a... reliable venue. So I actually took that with full confidence. My dad kind of supported her theory, and we did move it indoors. And by the way, I was talking later with some people because Christine, as I mentioned, had consumed some adult beverages prior to any of this. And I was worried for a moment, is her judgment impaired? And I realized, no, in this moment, in this element, she's not impaired. She's empowered. And so she rode that wave up to that ballroom. She was all over these people. They had no idea who she was, not the wedding coordinator, not anyone they'd met before, but she was like trying to produce this wedding. And I will say, ended up looking great, and even though it did not end up raining after all, and I know you were like seeming a little bummed about that that we had moved inside, I'm just going to tell you it was so humid and sticky. Friday, not at all. It's perfect. Saturday was very muggy, and there were a lot of people who were very grateful to move from the outdoor ceremony, which was so pretty, and then the outdoor... kind of cocktail hour into an air-conditioned space, I think it was a lifesaver. I think it was way better than being out in the humidity. That's my take. I think everything from that to the weather on Friday to the weather staying pretty tame for the actual ceremony.

By some stroke of luck, like everything turned up our way. I couldn't believe it. We didn't get to participate in the cocktail hour at all because we knew since the reception was going to be indoors, we wanted to maximize our picture taking outside during that cocktail hour. And the sun setting. Yes, it was, and those pictures, whenever we get them back, like no doubt about it are going to be beautiful. 100%. But that was the... Only time I started to feel like, oh, wow, I'm getting really sweaty. It's really humid. And then when we were indoors, we were back to being comfortable. Like, it was. Again, I think because of all the bad luck we got up until that point, we cashed in on Friday and Saturday with some good luck. And then there was not just the ceremony and everyone looked great and it was just lovely. Then the dance floor was packed throughout the reception, closing with some Billy Joel, which I love, very Long Island, love to see that. And then a lot of people went to one of the various bars. at the resort afterwards. And I was there for a bit. I absolutely Irish goodbye because I knew I was going to get pressure from Cookie and probably others to stay out longer. And based on some of the shenanigans from the previous night, I'm like, I definitely don't want to go down that route. So I went back, but woke up on Sunday, felt great, and just left smiling because I know that it was a really stress. clogged, clouded time for you guys as a couple for the last couple months, and to then come out the other side with all your loved ones there and everyone having a spectacular time. I just knew how important that was for you and for your family. Josh, we've got to run here, but I just want to say getting to meet your family and Hannah's family, I like hit it off with her sister. We chatted for a long time. The aunts, the uncles, all your friends, even the Ranger fans. Just a really fun time. Everyone was cool. Everyone was super, super nice. And I just had a great time. And Christine, briefly, I know you feel the same way. It was such an amazing weekend. Justin and Hannah, like what a testament to you about how great everybody got along. It felt like we were, well, I felt like I was family. No, it felt like everyone, we had, through this resort, wherever I went, I saw someone I knew. And I feel like because we were all kind of in it together, like everyone got to speak to each other and everyone got along perfectly with it. It was insane. With that. We've got to run. But believe me, ladies and gentlemen, damas and caballeros, we need to talk about senior frogs. Oh, and we will on the Wednesday Guy Benson. We'll talk to you then. I was worried for a moment. Is her judgment impaired? And I realized, no, in this moment, in this element, she's not impaired. She's empowered.

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