Russia refuses to bend in ongoing peace deal talks

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Maya Tom, Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sewing division. It's Brian Kilmeade. So glad you're there. It's the Brian Kilmeade. I hope you had a fantastic weekend. It's kind of a short week. We've got Thanksgiving on Thursday. The whole country celebrates it. I'm not asking for your religious persuasion. Everybody takes a break, I hope, if you don't have to work through it. At least you have a job if you do our working through it. Lucas Tomlinson's going to be with us. He's in Trinidad, Tobago. He's going to bring us up to date on this push in the Caribbean and around the coast of Venezuela to get Maduro out. There's just no two ways about it. I mean, I asked the president this on Friday. When you talk to Maduro and he says he wants to speak and you said you're going to speak to him, is it essentially you have to leave? And he wouldn't tell me his game plan. But I think that's that's it. The president does not relish invading a country. I don't think he'll do it. But man, the pressure is on. I'll talk about that in the big picture. And just keep in mind, too, some fun stuff. Moni of Trump will welcome the Christmas tree ahead of Thanksgiving before Trump pardons two turkeys today. So the first lady welcomes in the Christmas tree proving she's back in action that Trump's are back in power. So let's get to the big three. Number three. And we also spoke about the importance of understanding what it is that hurts New Yorkers in their pockets. It's their rent. It's their childcare. It's their utilities. That is Zohran Mamdani, the mayor elect of New York City, talking about his meeting with the President of the United States, the economy and how the president can make the country more affordable. They both agree on that. The problem is they have totally different opinions about how to do it. I sense Zohran Mamdani will fall flat on his face, but you tell me what you think. Number two. We study what's lawful and what's not lawful, and the Democrats stunt insinuating that they're illegal or unconstitutional orders. It's downright dangerous. That is so true. The Dems treason tape fallout continues as Dems try and make sense of their idiotic appeal to our warfighters to stand up against what they think Commander-in-Chief's orders will be. Number one. One of the things that happens when you've been involved in this now for 10 months is you get a pretty good sense of what the priorities and the red lines and the important issues are for both sides. And so that allowed us to create a foundational document. That is what they're talking about. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in Geneva right now, Switzerland, very optimistic now, making progress. U.S., Europe and Ukraine, gaining an agreement on a peace proposal that was originally put out predominantly with Russia's wish list in mind. The question, will Russia bend at all? And I just had a chance to speak to the General Secretary of NATO. And that was one of my questions. So I have a ton of questions, and so do you. But I have a ton of questions to them about, you know, do the Russians need this? Are they hurting much worse than we know? I mean, it seems as though when you're begging people in beleaguered African countries to come fight for you, if you've already emptied your prisons and now you've run out of prisoners to go into a meat grinder, if you're losing, on the average, 20,000 soldiers a month.

Are you desperate? Well, maybe not because you have a country of 150 million. You did gain one square mile of land. You did take 20% of Ukraine. But as long as we are backing them, Russians can't win. And it's pretty clear that unless we give them substantial more weapons or fight directly with them, I don't think Ukraine can win. But here's Marco Rubio a few hours ago. Cut two. We had a very good date today. I think we made a tremendous amount of progress, even from the last time I spoke to you, and I apologize for keeping you waiting, but there was more work to be done. We began almost three weeks ago with a foundational document that we socialized and ran by both sides and with input from both sides. And one of the things that happens when you've been involved in this now for 10 months is you get a pretty good sense of what the priorities and the red lines and the important issues are for both sides. And so that allowed us to create a foundational document. So they have a few things that have to be addressed. Obviously, if you look at those 28 points, the Ukrainians couldn't pass it. Even if Volodymyr Zelensky was forced to sign it, the parliament's not going to pass it. Because the Ukrainians are in this. The whole country's in it. You know, they started out with an army of 200,000. Now it's up to like 700,000. And then they are the second biggest army in Europe, and they can fight like nobody's business, as good as anybody. And they've starting innovate their own weapons, generating their own artillery. It's pretty amazing. So Michael McCall said it, as chairman of foreign relations, says, I would not advise Ukraine to sign this document. Senator Mark Warner said on Fox News Sunday that he called it a historically bad deal, but it's gradually getting better. And that's what I think is important. They're making it better. Here's what Scott Bessent says, the Treasury Secretary, cut seven. The real that laggards here are the Europeans. The Europeans tell me, oh, we are doing our 19th sanctions package. In my mind, Kristen, if you're going to do something 19 times, you've failed. Instead, President Trump moved forward with a bold initiative that the Europeans would not follow us on. He put a 25% tariff on India because they were buying Russian oil. The Russian oil going in... to the Indian refineries, guess who was buying that? The Europeans, they are funding the war on themselves. President Trump, two weeks ago, sanctioned Rosneft and Luke Oil, the two biggest Russian oil companies, and the price of Russian oil has collapsed. So that's important. And at first I thought, why are you asking him the questions about this deal? But we do have business interests now with Ukraine and it's rare earth. And we need that. My goodness, everyone understands that now. So I just talked to the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte. And here's what he told me is the latest that he understands. Cut 13. It always takes two to tango, but it starts with a plan. And it starts with a president, President Trump, who wants to end this, as he did with Pakistan, India, as he has done so successfully in Gaza, as he has done with basically eliminating the nuclear capabilities of Iran, what he has done between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So this is a president really pushing peace worldwide. This is a difficult one. He said that. He said this would be one of the...

easier ones. No, it was not true. It is one of the more difficult ones. But I'm sure that we will get this done. And yesterday was an important step. And of course, there will be more steps following the coming days. I mean, I don't have to go over some of the 28 points that are troublesome. Number one, give up all of the Donbodge region. Well, they haven't won it. They didn't win it in 2014. They didn't win it in 2024. And they haven't won it now as we get ready for 2026. And I talked to General Keene over the weekend. It says it'll take three years for them to get the rest of the Dunboss, which would be Donnesk. And what they tell me is geographically, if you give up Dunesk, there's a highway right to Keefe. And that at any moment when you have the wrong president, they will decide we're going right for the Capitol. Again. And they will. And the reason why this matters, and so many people are rolling their eyes, who do we care about Ukraine? And... I don't understand why I have to explain this, but to me it's so obvious. The Russians have infiltrated into Georgia. They stayed. They're right now working on overthrowing the Moldova government. They're sitting there. The continued cyber attacks on all the Baltic states continue. And now they're threatening Finland, who now has joined NATO and Sweden, has now joined NATO. So that has worked against their best interests. And now they're looking around saying, well, you know, You want cheap oil and gas, we could do that. And they're trying to circumvent us. And they're doing the best they can to expand. So by doing that, it keeps their country distracted over their terrible economic policies. So if you allow Ukraine to end, just end, we're going to be right back we were in a year or two. When Trump is gone and let's say they'll go three years, they're just going to wait for the next Democratic president to come in and say Russia has been misunderstood. We'll take care of them and they'll just go in and it'll take another country. And little by little, they'll reestablish the Soviet Union. Now I have no idea who's going to replace Vladimir Putin, but the guy's 70, and he's probably going to be around another 10 years. And the next guy, who do you know, it's going to be worse? So you have to arm all our allies, and you have to make sure Ukraine is impenetrable. That's why the security guarantees are vital. And that's why Russia will not have any, not allow any international troops on Ukrainian soil. And they want to limit the size of the army. Why would you care the size of Ukraine's army? There's no, Ukraine is no threat to invade Russia. No, but they're a threat to stop Russia. And that's what they've shown. So if you end the wrong way, you were just postponing the next war. And it might be a huge war. I'll take a time out and come back and talk about the other stuff just to make it a clean break. And at the bottom of the hour, I'll talk about our maneuvers in Venezuela. And there's a Wall Street Journal story today I find fascinating.

And it's, I think the headline says it all. And essentially, if you look at it and see what's happening in Central and South America, we don't usually pay much attention to it. And it says South America is turning more right wing and getting trumpier by the day. That's the goal. Not to make them sycophants. They're independent countries. Do your own thing. Just keep China, Russia and Iran out. Got it? Brian Kilmeade. From breaking news to big-name guests, Brian brings you insight you won't hear anywhere else. You're listening to the Brian Kilmeade. This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market's summer fruit fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop summer fruit fest at Whole Foods Market.

If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmeade. So I think the reason we put that statement out is because the sheer number of, frankly, young officers who are coming to us and saying, I just am not sure, what do I do? You know, I'm in Southcom and I'm involved in the National Guard. I'm just not sure what do I do. What are you talking about? I don't think for one second, that was Senator Elissa Slotkin who put together that treason tape that told everybody, hey, if you feel an order, you don't have to, you don't have to obey illegal orders. As if everybody retains an attorney, I don't like to go, I'm in the National Guard. I don't want to go to Chicago. I'm in, I'm on the Gerald R. Ford. I don't want to go to Venezuela. I don't think we should be in Syria. I don't have to agree to do anything here. I don't want to have to say in the Pacific for all this. all this period of time. I don't want to be stuck in Guam. I think it's an illegal order. I think it puts me in danger. Where was this unsolicited... tape, they talked about the had these, was authored by Elissa Slotkin. It was her idea. And mostly the rest were veterans coming out, urging our military not to feel as though they have to obey illegal orders. What illegal orders? What are you talking about? And now all of a sudden two days later you say, I'm getting flooded with people asking me if what to do. Yes, they call Elissa Slotkin because she was in the CIA and asked her what to do. I don't believe that for a second. I love that Republicans push back. They did their own tape. Here is Jack Bergman, August Flueger, and Scott Perry. Cut 35. Troops, listen up. Any service member who refuses a lawful order is subject to court-martial for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We study what's lawful and what's not lawful, and the Democrats stunt insinuating that they're illegal or unconstitutional orders. It's downright dangerous. It is corrosive. It is meant to weaken our country and weaken the military. You know, and they got some pushback. Now, I don't know who booked Face the Nation, which I think is the number one Sunday show. But they had Jason Crow and Mark Kelly on. And then they had the heretic Senator Rand Paul, who doesn't agree with the president at all about anything normal. You know, he, again, doesn't want any infiltration anywhere. And. also is against any Venezuelan operation. He wants to question those people in a boat. They have no choice, he says. And, of course, he was against the Iranian bombing, right? And he wanted to cut off aid to Israel. So good luck with that. I don't know what planet he's on. So I don't know who booked their show, but you only got one perspective. But they did get some pushback. And I appreciated that. Because what are you talking about with legal orders? Jason Crow citing citing comments.

that he said in the past. Comments, not orders. President said, you know, with all these rioters, if they're going to come storming at the White House, why don't you shoot him in the leg? He said to Mark Esper. That wasn't an order. So stuff I say behind closed doors, if I'm having a meeting with Eric and Allison and Pete and I say, what about this idea? And it's a different idea. And they go, no, you can't do that. It's probably not good to say on the air. Well, all of a sudden, I'm out of control because I'm brainstorming different ideas. It maybe might not help the show. So when Margaret Brennan brought up a good question, she said, why not call a hearing before cutting a tape? Lindsey Graham says, you owe it to the men and women in the military to be specific about what you were talking about. What these senators and house members did was unnerving and it was unconscionable to suggest that the President of the United States is using unlawful orders without giving an example. You think? So, I mean, I was a little taken aback nonetheless. So. She was asked directly with Elissa Slotkin, what are you talking about? Cut 34. Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders? To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela. Okay. Just let's leave Venezuela alone, right? Just a vicious country that has destroyed a country, exiled and jailed thousands, destroyed the economy, is a surrogate of Cuba now, China, and Russia, and Iran. In our own hemisphere, an outpost to do whatever they want to keep this guy in power. But you guys don't like that. Senator Mark Kelly, cut 29. This president from before he was in office, as he was a candidate, to the time he was in office in his first administration, has said things that cause us great concern. There's a trend here. When he was running for president the first time, he talked about he wanted the military. He said he would, he would, he would, the military should be killing the families of terrorists. And when he was told that that was illegal, this was on a debate stage. He basically said that the military will not refuse to follow my orders, that they will carry out his orders, regardless of what they were. Shooting protesters in the legs is something he brought up in his first administration. Those who comments, you idiot, so everything that they set in a debate stage in 2015, but you understand the sentiment that bin Laden and his family and KSM and other people, you know, when we took out al-Awaki, excuse me, when... When Alawaki was taken out by President Obama, he had people with him. And I think they were a member of his family. Did you bring up charges and say that Obama, we need to cut a tape saying we shouldn't follow illegal orders? You know, Obama killed 560 through drone strikes. They weren't available to be read their Miranda rights.

So your explanation for putting out this tape is insane. So the president came out and said, listen, this is treason. And in the past, treason has been punished by death. And then everybody went crazy. And I guess Jason Crow got one of these threatening voicemails to his office, and he actually brought it to face the nation. If I have to bring every email that's threatening my life and most of anybody in politics, anybody might be on your side or on somebody else's side, we'd be here all day. Or you wouldn't even be in politics. Here's what the president said. To clarify, he said to me on Friday on this show, cut 26, cut 28. I don't know about the modern day things because, you know, modern day is a lot softer. But in the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death. Yeah, but you're not saying, you're not threatening them. A lot of people are interpreting there's a threat and their security. Well, I'm not threatening them, but I think they're in serious trouble. I would say they're in serious trouble. So I'm more outraged today. And if you saw One Nation last night, even though this was an issue that was resonating on Friday. I thought, you know, I think it's fine for Sunday. And here's why. If you came out and said Donald Trump is offering illegal orders and making soldiers do things against their will, I would say, yeah, that's called an episode of the view. Or that's just a member of the squad on the floor trying to get attention. But when you see guys that served brilliantly like Mark Kelly as an astronaut and a fighter pilot and Jason Crow, by all accounts, who was a fantastic special officer and became a lawyer afterwards. And then you have Elissa Slotkin who served in the CIA who was fancying herself a moderate. When they were on that tape, I don't know, the other guys. I was taking it back. And you know what? Disturbed. Because those are the ones I thought would be center left. And I think when you're center left and center right and our country, your party wins or loses, like, you don't get that upset. You only get upset when someone's way right in the wind or way left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But these people just put themselves in the squad category in my view. What about yours? 1866408-7669. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat, emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan, $15 dollars a month a month. Every plan, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for $1.90 for $12 per month plan required to $50.com. See terms.

Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kilmeade. I think there's flexibility. I do know that Marco Rubio said within the next 72 hours, we will know a great deal about whether this goes forward or not. I think Volodymyr Zelensky has stated the president that he sees this as a vision, but not a done deal. So it should not be taken or leave it. on all party sides, except the Russians I haven't talked to, is that this is an ongoing negotiation process. So they're really getting it started. The way the White House described last night was we had to start putting this pen to paper so we could get something accomplished. So that is Mike McCall. And Mike McCall is going to be retiring, but he's chairman of foreign relations. And he really is very passionate, knowledgeable about international relations, obviously. Wouldn't have gotten that job. But I think you should know, according to Axios, October 22nd, flying back after the Gaza deal, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said, let's work on Ukraine. And they said, let's use some of the best principles, the outsiders pressuring both sides to the table. And they drew up the 28-point plan. And it got released. And it's way too Russian. And they immediately set up, I should add, a meeting with a Russian. who they've been used to dealing with, and they met with them in Miami. And they said, look, what do you need? And they gave up 28 points. And most of these are pro-Russian. Some of them are non-starters, and some of them are not. So when that got out and the president said sign it by Thursday or else we cut you off, people thought, well, what kind of deal is this? Now it turns out it's a living, breathing document. They're working on it last night. They came out in Marco Rubio met with the press and says they're making great progress with the Ukrainians and Europeans. Lucas Tomlinson covers all the theaters. Right now he's in Trinidad watching what's the buildup in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela as we try to tackle and stop the drug trade coming from there and maybe get rid of Maduro once and for all. Before we talk about the current beach you're on, let's talk about what's going on in Geneva. Are there any indications that were closer now than ever before? Certainly some signs are closer. The fact that both sides are talking, the Russians and the U.S. side and the Ukrainians, although some of the criticism from some in the Republican Party, like Mitch McConnell and the chairman of the Armed Service Committee, Senator Roger Wicker, is their apoplectic that Ukraine would be forced in any kind of deal to cut back on their forces, you know, part of this deal. As you mentioned, Brian, some of it appearing to come from the Russian side has Ukraine cutting back on its military. And for some of the hawks inside Congress, that's going to be a non-starter, including from Ukrainian forces. You don't want to see Vladimir Putin, who many say has never honored any agreement he's ever made, cut back on Ukrainian forces and give Russia maybe the inkling to keep going after this thing is signed. Yeah, how it ends, it will decide if it's going to start again.

And, you know, obviously they weren't dissuaded from their deal in 94. They weren't dissuaded after taking Crimea in 2014. They did still a rate 10 years later, they invaded. So when Trump's say, look, I stopped the killing, yep. But if it continues, it'll be his legacy. If this is just a pause, it'll be his legacy. That's right. And we remember those images from Afghanistan when you had the Taliban armed with billions of dollars of American weaponry. Well, if the Russians were to take over Ukraine, nobody wants to see a million Ukrainians under arms, American arms, on the Russian side of things. Nobody wants to see that happen. What many want to see is ceasefire along the line of contact right now, along the front lines. They don't want Ukraine to have to see territory that they think it amounts. to surrender. We're hearing that a lot from European allies saying Ukraine should not be forced to give up territory. Now, there are some in Ukraine who do want to see the war end and of giving up the rest of Dombas, just a little bit left. And you have to think what is left in that area, right? Brian, I mean, the place has been decimated for nearly four years of war. Would that end things? But certainly, without strong backing from the West, people still want to see America ramp up. It's munitions. You know, there's some studies that it's going to take seven years for America to replenish our stockpile of weapons that we've given to the Ukrainians or sold to European allies. And a lot of people think Europe needs to ramp up. And the French say they're going to do an arms deal in 10 years. 10 years feels like an awfully long time. Absolutely. The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean is apparent to everyone is supposed to be noticed. We have a huge firepower, maybe the most ever assembled in the region. I mean, in terms of what they have, they have the USS, Gerald Ford. They got thousands, about 15,000 servicemen and women, a board between everything else that they have in our various locations. How much pressure is on Maduro? There's a lot of pressure on Maduro right now. You mentioned the firepower. About 30% of all deployed American warships are here in the Caribbean. And the Caribbean, while it has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, it's been no stranger to conflict. Remember Grenada in 83? Remember Panama, 89? Right now, the forces assembled are as large as in Grenada, I've been told. And people want to see the Maduro regime lead. Now, when people, our audience here is regime change. People, for a good reason, get a little nervous. Speaking to Elliot Abrams, President Trump's former special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, he thinks the difference between Venezuela and Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Middle East when it comes to regime changes. It's a united front in Venezuela. You don't have the same ethnic differences, religious differences, racial differences that you do in the Middle East. You have 70% of the population of Venezuela voted for the opposition candidate. Maduro, of course, ignored that. And so he has condemnation from the international community. It was interesting yesterday in the Sunday talk shows to hear the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner, Democrats, say that he thought some of this was on Biden for not doing more before, Brian.

Well, we know that's the case. He said, okay, we're going to let Chevron come back in there. You can pump some oil out. Why? He didn't want us to drill at home. So we get that dirty oil and put that into the fray in exchange for having free and fair elections. And he didn't. And there was no hell to pay as Joe Biden was barely holding on. Today, the big story in the New York Times at General Dan Kane is making a trip over to... a trip over to Puerto Rico. And I guess he has okayed a clandestine program to find out what's going on and maybe undermine Maduro. It's very rare when you have something like that announced, isn't it? It is rare. Clearly, this is all part of the messaging campaign. There's information operations or sciops, if you will, going on with the Madera regime. We saw various leaks of the press in Reuters about the CIA ramping up covert operations. Of course, this was green lighted by President Trump. He admitted to it last month that this was going to be happening. We're now hearing this could be happening soon. The challenge for the opposition leader, Maria Maria Corina Machado, is the generals. And today the State Department is going to be adding a Venezuelan cartel linked to Maduro and the generals that is responsible for the drug trade. And that's going to open them up to air strikes potentially. The foreign terrorist organization list, that's essentially the kill list, Brian. Remember back in February when Gendaragua and other Venezuelan gangs were added that list, now they're getting droned in the Caribbean. It's been over 20 strikes, over 80 killed. That could be coming close to the Dero regime. What an official told me yesterday, somebody knows this area very well, was that these generals, about 25 to 50, these Venezuelan generals, have bank accounts in excess of billions of dollars. Again, 25 to 50, Venezuelan in general. So the tricky part here is if Maduro is overthrown, the CIA can help orchestrate that, perhaps the way they did in Guatemala, 1954, a year after Iran, could they find somebody to lead the country? They have it in Maria Corina Machado, but is she going to sit at a table with all these generals that were loyal to Maduro? Hard to see that. So this is not going to be clean, but we'll see. It'll be great if they just found a place in Russia right next to Bashar al-Assad, maybe on a cul-de-sacque. Maybe Eric Snow, it'll be down the block. Alex Gray, the NSC chief of staff under Trump, the former end. He said this over the weekend, cut 50. Something tells me he's probably going to end up in Havana with his benefactors in the Cuban regime. And he also wouldn't surprise me if somehow he ended up sharing an apartment with Bashar al-Assad from Syria and Moscow. And look, these dictators, they have a club, they look out for each other. I think the most important thing right now is to find an exit path where we can get Maduro out of Caracas and we can get the Chinese, as you said, Rachel, we can get them out.

out of Caracas, and we can focus on getting Americans safe from the importation of dangerous drugs that Venezuela is so actively helping to promote. And the way we understand it, the drugs go from Colombia to Venezuela, transported to the various locations, and that's how it's gone, even though Colombia's president came out and said maybe it's time for Maduro to go. So that would be the best scenario. No bloodshed. Maduro leaves. The army shares that goes loyal to. the Maria Corina Machado Party, right? That would be the plan. That's something Elliot Abrams said. He said that as long as you pay the military, there won't be problems. It's still hard to imagine that generals with billions of dollars in the bank account are going to be loyal to a new leader, but perhaps. But it's certainly going to be a challenge. I mean, remember how many years the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brothers won a Castro out of Cuba. And regime changes. It's not easy. It's not clean. But the hope is... with the United Front in Venezuela, nobody except for Maduro's inner circle supports him. So when you have 70, 80% of the country, and let's not forget all the people have fled. Their reports that up to 20% of the country has the citizens in Venezuela have fled the country. But the regime changed, certainly some murky waters ahead. Many people think there could be. strikes at some point against the Majero regime to neutralize, you know, some of his military capability. They still have a few old F-16s, believe it or not. They still have Russian fighter jets that can be airborne. They still have third generation Russian air defense systems. Certainly the training nothing on par with the U.S. military, nothing like our Air Force pilots do at Nellis in Nevada every year at Red Flag, dogfighting and all that. But that is the goal to get the opposition leader in there, Maria Corina Machado. and get Maduro out of there. You've got to show them an off ramp, right? It's like cornering somebody in the dark alley when you're a police officer. You have to give him the off ramp. But it's not going to be easy. He's going to stand firm. And lastly, just a big story in the Wall Street Journal today and how Central and South America is getting trumpier. Chile's poised to elect a president as a conservative. Bolivia already did. We know Argentina and the president are fast friends. He's a disciple, goes to CPAC and everything. Peru has been beset by increased extortion, one of the several right-wing candidates likely to win next year's election. Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who's a corrupt individual, deserves back in jail. He is barely leading his reelection. Jair Bolsonaro obviously would have been a better choice. So there's a sense in Central and South America are leaning more right, and that would be right away from China. No better example than right here in Trinidad, Brian. The government here in Trinidad very close and loyal to the United States. Part of the reason is there are a number of oil and gas fields offshore. Venezuela controls a bunch of them. Where I'm standing along the waterfront here, Brian, Venezuela is only seven miles away. And offshore, there are oil fields that Trinidad would like, you're right about this, the right word swing in Latin America. Make no mistake, though. The United States used to be the largest training partner in South America. Today, it's China. I was in Peru last year with President Biden, and when the Chinese cut the ribbon on a new billion-dollar port in Peru. China's – I've seen tons of Chinese tourists and businessmen here in Trinidad. They're everywhere. And part of the goal, make no mistake, it goes beyond the Maduro regime. We talked about this on Fox and Friends. Part of the goal here is not just to unseat the Maduro regime, but to get Russia –

shine in Iran out of the Western Hemisphere. Many military leaders, officials in the Trump administration will say that this is our backyard here in the Caribbean, here in the Western Hemisphere, and you've got to get them out. I just wish I think the administration has to do a better job briefing both sides because the bold centers seem very in the dark about the policy, even though it seems right-headed and somewhat bipartisan. Lucas, thanks so much doing a great job out there. Enjoy Trinidad. Brian, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Listen, we're going to come back and I'm squeezing some calls. I know you have a lot on your mind. 1-866-408-7669. From breaking news to big name guests, Brian brings you insight you won't hear anywhere else. You're listening to the Brian Kilmeade Show. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FN Radio 20. 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 order to order. Please drink responsibly.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Here it all on the Brian Kilmeade. And finally, new rule, happy Thanksgiving. I can't believe that even that now is a political issue. It is a real shame what's happened to this holiday, which used to be all about the good Fs, food, friends, family, football, fun. And now it's, fuck you. You're not even invited because you voted for the wrong person. It's got to stop because we're at a point now where politics has broken up more families than letting your wife see your phone. There's just the sugar rush that the no contact people get from never coming in second and I hunt hate Trump the most contest. Really? That's your strategy to go full high school and tell the guy with all the power he can't sit with you at the lunch table? So again, that was it for Bill Maher until next year. It was his last show. I guess he still got his podcast, but he makes a whole bunch of sense. But I don't think Thanksgiving is ruined. I think that people, you know, they got this polarizing view, I think, as I mentioned earlier on Fox and Friends, I think that when Bush was president, you were talking about the war. You know, should we, shouldn't we? Iraq going south, Afghanistan, where's bin Laden, things like that. A lot of issues. Obama people talked about his rock star status was he actually getting done. But it wouldn't be that polarizing, you know, because Obama is kind of a neutral character, even though some of his decisions sitting with the Muslim Brotherhood going through the Middle East and apologizing. You know, a lot of stuff he does was subtly divisive, but not flagrantly. And Trump is somebody all in and all out. I mean, I just saw this stat. that 74% of Republicans supported George Bush at this point in his second term. 74% supported George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, roughly that. You know, 87% of Republicans support Donald Trump? So you know exactly where they stand. I mean, the portion, the amount of Republicans that don't like them are just a handful. You know, Mitch McConnell, you don't hear anything about him. Liz Chen, he's been totally neutralized. Adam Kinsinger, nobody cares what he thinks. You know, now Marjorie Taylor Greene in that category. Good luck with that. Her approval is 31%. We're Republicans. She's been a, she was actually helped so much by McCarthy and Johnson and Trump. And everyone said, yeah, the space lasers Jewish thing was a little crazy, but they wouldn't put her on a committee. And the Democrats were mean to her, but we're going to prop her up. And now she's Ms. Epstein and let's get health care subsidies. And I guess I'm going to quit now because Donald Trump's mean to me. So I ask people to write, and here's what they're saying. Talking about affordability came up a lot today. It says, I watch Fox every day and agree with most of your opinions. But using federal land for housing, there's 1.4 million empty houses. We don't have a housing shortage. We have an affordable housing shortage. About 63% of empty houses are owned by investors. So that's true. The Blackstone, the BlackRock thing where they're buying up houses of all different stripes and they're...

And they're just redoing them and making America renters again because it's a good investment. So you invest in Black Rock and you're happy. But if you want to buy your first home, you're not. So that's an important part. Mo writes, I need to understand how this is the busiest travel holiday in 15 years against the declining approval of President Trump handling the economy. Since I consider traveling via commercial aircraft and optional luxury, how can we have record-breaking air travel and be critical of the economy? Throwing all the optional overland travel and the disparity is even greater. I hear you. A lot of people are going to be, don't really have to be convinced. Some are getting convinced. Oh, the economy's bad. The economy's bad. I heard this over the weekend. The president had the bad 10 days. Loses Marjorie Taylor Greene and bad economic news. I'm thinking, what's the bad economic news? You heard about the job numbers on Thursday that sent the market roaring? There's a fear that the AI's in a bubble. All right. How many people are in AI? Maybe you invest in some of those companies, but I think a small portion. They say out of 10, people in the upper class, 6.7%, 6.7, 6.7, give the president 6.7 out of 10. For the working class 4.5, the president's going to work on that. And if he can fix it, he's going to win again. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan. It's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmeade.

Everyone, so glad you're there, the Brian Kilmeade coming away from 48th and 6. Tyler Friedrich Merz's got to be with us today. CEO of nine line apparel. Friedrich Merz is also a former Apache helicopter pilot, turned special operations air mission commander. I need his perspective on Venezuela. What an operation like that would consist of? And standing by is Ambassador Kurt Volker. He was a former ambassador to NATO, distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. So we have to find out there from him, what the latest is from Geneva, where Marco Rubio waited in a few hours ago, very optimistic about progress they made with Ukraine. But a lot of questions. Let's get to the big three. Number three. And we also spoke about the importance of understanding what it is that hurts New Yorkers in their pockets. It's their rent. It's their childcare. It's their utilities. That is a Zohran Mamdani after his meeting with the President of the United States. What they had in common, they want to talk about affordability. What they don't have in common is their approaches to making things more affordable. We'll see what this all means for the midterms. I sense a strategy behind Trump's niceness. Number two. We study what's lawful and what's not lawful, and the Democrats stunt insinuating that they're illegal or unconstitutional orders. It's downright dangerous. Yes, that's Republican. That is a Republican military veteran pushing back against what the Democrats posted, and that is essentially urging our military to disobey Trump's orders. Dems treason tape fallout continues as Dems try and make sense of the idiotic appeal to those who fight our wars. to stand up against the Commander-in-Chief. I don't get it. Number one. One of the things that happens when you've been involved in this now for 10 months is you get a pretty good sense of what the priorities and the red lines and the important issues are for both sides. And so that allowed us to create a foundational document. That is, of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio moments ago, or should say hours ago, making progress in Geneva, U.S., Europe, Ukraine, gaining agreement on a peace proposal where it was very pro-Russian. Now we feel it's much less so. We've got to get the details. And we have to do this thing where find out what the Russians will say because they have no sign showed no sign of give. Ambassador Boko, welcome back. Hey, Brian. Thanks. Good to be with you. I would look at your comments. I know you was concerned about the 28-point program as I was, and you more so perhaps. But they're starting to push it back and starting to work with it and to the point where both sides seem relatively optimistic, something could be worked out. If the Russians are going to show some give, what are the chances of that? Yeah, well, that's what's happening here, Brian, it's very much, as you said, that was a hopelessly bad proposal, frankly, an embarrassment if you're an American, to see, you know, our country that, you know, one World War II stared down the Soviet Union, and now we talk about just handing over pieces of another country to Russia. So, Marco Rubio has stepped in now. He's met with the Ukrainians and Europeans, and he is working to fix that proposal so that it is something reasonable.

And he reports that he's made good progress on that. And so he's getting this back at the box. What that means is we're going to be right back where we were two weeks ago, before all of this with this new U.S. proposal, where the challenge is to get Vladimir Putin to want to stop his war. He started this war. He prosecutes this war. He kills civilians every night. And we've got to get him to stop. And that's the hard part. So we'll have a good proposal again after this week with Marco Rubio's intervention. I think we'll present this to the Russians. They will not agree on the surface. And then we're going to have to start applying some pressure. Here's what General Keene said, who's been updated on the latest from Geneva. He just was on our channel, Cut 53. We've got Vladimir Putin on the other side of it, and the reality is he has not taken one single step towards a temporary ceasefire or a peace deal whatsoever. Where he is, he still believes that eventually he's going to break the will and resolve the United States and the Europeans and the Volodymyr Zelensky government, and he will eventually have his way here. And that is the determined process that we're on here. unless he's weaker than we know. What do you think the chances of that? Well, I think that Vladimir Putin is weaker than we know, weaker than he wants to admit, certainly. Economically, militarily, politically, you name it. He's got high inflation. He's got high interest rates. He's got zero economic growth. He's burning through his foreign exchange reserves. He's having to find scrounge for soldiers because he doesn't want to have full conscription. So he's got a lot of trouble. And I think that's one of the reasons why he's been pushing so hard lately. is because he knows that the clock is ticking. Now, Keene is right, in my view. I think that that is the Russian attitude, and Vladimir Putin is ready to kill as many people as he needs to. But the problem for Vladimir Putin is that eventually he's going to run out of money and run out of people. Who first? Ukraine or Vladimir Putin? Well, this is really, this gets back to the question of what do we and the Europeans do? If you look at it, you know, we have between the United States and Europe combined, we've got 900 million or a billion people. We've got an economy that's 22 times the size of Russia's economy. We have better technology. We have better military equipment. If we leaned in and helped the Ukrainians, they would survive and win. Yeah, I mean, how much damage is done to the Russian energy sector?

Well, the Ukrainians have been hitting the refineries and some pipelines as well. There's reports that about 20% of the refining capacity is knocked out. That, in turn, means that there are higher gasoline prices in Russia, some shortages. They haven't had that many blackouts yet, but there is also some speculation that there will be blackouts affecting Russia later this winter, which is important in my view because... It brings home to the Russian people that this is not cost-free. For the Ukrainians, they're suffering every day, but it's their country and they're going to live through this. For the Russians, it's been sold to them as a special military operation that Russia's winning and is relatively cost-free to the Russian people. Bringing that home to them with higher gasoline prices, with lack of availability, with blackouts, that will put some pressure on Vladimir Putin domestically. I would hope. So where this whole proposal came from, October 22nd, according to Axios, Jared Kushner just cut this deal with Steve Witkoff on Gaza. And they said, let's work on Ukraine. Three days later, they come over the proposal, they meet with their Russian counterpart, and they come over that 28-point plan. Trump came out and said, I want it okay by Thursday. And then he realized it's not going to fly. He said, if I just see progress by Thursday, and then Marco Rubio got involved to try to fix it. I mean, I get the sense. Steve Wilcoff's a nice guy, but I feel he's over in his head, totally being manipulated by the Russians. Completely. On Gaza, you know, I give him and Jared Kushner and... There's credit. I think they did a good job on Gaza. But what they've done here with Russia, it's as if they went to Hamas and let Hamas write the plan and dictate it to Israel. It's just not going to fly that way. And likewise, letting the Russians basically snooker them. Even some of the things in this proposal are just simply factually not right. And they're based on false Russian information. So I think they did get taken for a ride by the Russians there. And I think Trump recognized that pretty quickly. He didn't endorse this right away. He said, sure, give it a try. And then when he saw how bad it was and the kind of reaction he's getting, he has distanced himself and allowed we'll be able to go in and fix it. Yeah, Dan Hoffman, who's his insightful of Russia of anyone that was his, he was actually stationed the CIA in Russia, cut 27. Wars end when both sides are too exhausted to fight or when one side wins. We're trying to impose peace and Russia's objectives really haven't changed. Vladimir Putin wants to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine and install a puppet regime. He wants primacy and his self-designated sphere of influence, and he does not want the United States to project power in Europe. He doesn't want the Trump administration to take any credit for solving this protracted conflict that is the most bloody land war in Europe since the Second World War. So do you think he's really that concern about it? It's the first time I heard that. He's that concerned about us looking strong, even though he is somewhat more friendly with Trump, and he really doesn't.

Ever say anything bad about him where he had no problem ripping previous leaders? The only force in the world that has ever stood up to Russia effectively is the United States, and Vladimir Putin knows that. So he wants to keep the U.S. out and neutralize. He wants to divide the United States from Europe. He wants to sow divisions in Europe. And the one thing I would add to what Dan said, for Vladimir Putin, there's no end point to this. This is a constant state of agitation. He wants to... to have churned. He wants to have instability. He wants to weaken the United States and weaken Europe. He wants to have conflicts in his neighborhood so that he gets influence out of that. He wants to expand Russia's boundaries. And he ran for re-election the last time his campaign slogan was Russia has no borders. So for him, this is a continuous process. And that's why we need to recognize that and draw our limits on him ourselves and say, no. Russia, you have borders and you stay within your borders. Right. And do you don't think that he wants that entry back into the G7 to make it a G8? You don't think he wants... I don't think he cares about that. No. But if you're going to rebuild your economy, don't you need things like that? For Vladimir Putin, it's power. So the economy is a means to power, hard currency as a means to power, corruption is a means to power. And so I don't think that he's really concerned about building the Russian economy, not like a normal leader would. He's concerned about having enough extraction resources, oil, gas, minerals. selling those and then skimming off that for the Kremlin to wage their wars and for him to exercise power. I mean, here's the thing, how this war ends decides when the next one starts, if it starts. The one thing is pretty clear, Ambassador Volker, is that when this is done, The answer is not more American troops in the region. It's getting Europe to defend themselves, buying our material, our weapons, for the most part, and then arming up themselves and be their own deterrent with our backing, with our coaching, with our war planning. But that's the key to this, isn't it? That's exactly right, Brian. And to give President Trump credit, he's got NATO allies committed to spend 5% of GDP on defense now. He's got them willing to put troops in Ukraine as a coalition of the willing. He's got them helping Ukraine on air defense. They are going to be investing in doing a lot more. And that's exactly what we should be pushing for. So I think that part's coming together. But the tough part and where the U.S. role was essential is getting Vladimir Putin to end the war.

Yeah, and I'm very curious. So they're going to matter to Geneva, and they're going to change these 28 points. It'll probably be 28 but different. And I'm seeing the edits coming through, and I look forward to the details. But then we're going to see if the Russians are going to dig in and say, I'll meet you there too. I'll go into the other room and I'll start working on it. Right now there's no indication outside the emissary, the one who set up Alaska and gave, I think, Steve Woodcock bad information to set up Alaska. There's no indication that Vladimir Putin will do that. Unless, of course, for some reason. he feels as though he has to. He lost 20,000 people last month, according to our reports. Yeah. Again, Vladimir Putin is willing to sacrifice a lot of his own people anyway. It doesn't mean much to him that he lost 20,000 people. But I think in terms of the way Russia is going to handle this, I would just have to highlight, too, Russia never even said that they would agree to the original U.S. proposal, which was drafted by the Russians. So they are holding it out there, letting us churn. having us presented to the Ukrainians, then we negotiate with Ukrainians, and Russia just sits back and watches. And I'll guarantee you that they will just say, no, they're not going to do that. And this will just continue on because they want to see whether we really are willing to put pressure on them to get them to come to the table and end the war. And it's clear Ukraine knows how to play the game now. They're not saying this doesn't work. They're saying, let me fix it. That's right. Yeah, so I think that's smart. So it doesn't look like both sides are being opposite. No, you want me to, I'll work on it. No problem. I'll show up. See if those guys will. That's exactly right. Ambassador, we'll keep an eye on this and hopefully we'll get the ending we're all looking for. Ambassador Kurt Volker, thank you. Yeah, appreciate it, Brian. Thanks. Back at a moment. Politics, current events, and news that affects you. Brian's got a lot more to say. Stay with Brian Kilmeade.

The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmeade. Their statement, I was rather shocked by. Just because we weren't ready or didn't like the candidates, Hillary and Kamala Harris, doesn't mean we're not ready for a woman. I think it's a bad attitude. I do. I mean, we said we weren't ready for a black president and someone, I can't remember who. Maybe she remembers. It just has to be the right one. I'm telling you, America would have no problem electing any minority president and any woman present that was competent. It was Hillary Clinton, I don't look and say, well, that's a woman. I looked at Bill Clinton, you looked at Bill Clinton, okay? More of a moderate, ran as a moderate different time, and Hillary Clinton was way to the left. I know how she was Secretary of State for a while, but by the time she ran for office, she was for open borders. Remember, she actually said that. We caught her on tape. She was running for open borders. She was lazy, did not want to do a lot, did not want to do. any interviews, never wanted to do any opposition interviews, I think maybe one or two or entire time. Bad candidate. Kamala Harris, you don't need me to run through how bad she was. You saw how bad she was as a vice president. You saw as a bad candidate as she went. She never lasted to one primary. That's not because America wasn't ready for a woman. I'm telling you right now, if there was no Trump, if America, if there was no MAGA, Nikki Haley would have been a front runner to get the nomination last time around, even more than Ron DeSantis. Because, I mean, I'm a big fan of Ron DeSantis as a candidate. He's average. As an executive, he's fantastic. Haley's both. Really good candidate and really good executive, that international experience. She would have got it. She would have had as good as chance as any male Republican to win, and nobody would have not voted for because of her gender. And I was just so happy to hear Bill Maher say that. Because Michelle Obama, who just seemed so angry about everything, including at her husband, what did he do? I mean, I have no idea about personal dynamics and relationships, but they're making us look at this. Because what did President Obama say? I'm at a big deficit with Michelle. Why? What did you do? Because you were a two-term president. He became a multi-billionaire, made her the most, I guess, saw-deft. If she put her on a bunch of magazines, I think it was more than any of the woman, there was ever some category of what woman you look up to. I think Michelle Obama's top of the list. Why? Because Barack Obama became president and she was his wife. Right? That's it. And then she would be competent on the stump, but she never wanted to talk politics, never wanted to talk substance. A minute she got out there and started making some stands and let her radical views run wild, then you would say to yourself, okay, not going to be elected. But to just say it's a woman, it's competent, I'm black, on white, racist America, we're done with that. At least there's another Democrat that's done with that. I'm trying to think. You know, right away they said Abigail Spanberger, if, you know, before she became a candidate and let herself know, she couldn't even have the guts to come out and say she's against trans men and women's locker rooms, you know, that type thing that took no courage. People are talking about her as a presidential candidate. I mean, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, if you were going to vote or not vote for Governor Gretchen Whitmer, nobody I know says, well, I don't need a woman in there. No, you don't like the way she governed Michigan or you do.

Or you say, I don't want the squad out there. I don't want a socialist out there. I don't want Bernie Sanders disciple out there. I don't want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Miss Queens out there, who's really Miss Westchester. I don't want that. I don't want to, you know, nobody says I don't want a woman. I'm telling you, ask around this Thanksgiving. You just ask your family. You ask the 80-year-olds, ask the 60-year-olds, ask the 20-year-olds. Would you have any hesitancy voting for a woman? I'm telling you, I'd be very curious to hear your answer. I mean, you know, maybe some people are dug in and still don't want women to vote. It can't do anything with that. It can't do anything with that. That's sexist attitude. But it's not that prevalent. I'm telling you, if I'm hanging out and someone said, I would never vote for a woman president, what are you talking about? Most people dealing with a situation where a woman is in, if you're married, a woman's in charge of almost everything substantial in the house, you split to duties back and forth. You ever say to yourself, well, as a man, I got to do that. You know, I got to call the landscaper. I got to balance the checkbook. You break things up. It depends on what you're good at. And that's the same thing with this country. It's just a cop out to say, America's not ready. I'm not going to waste my time because you're not ready for a woman. But that's Michelle Obama, always angry. Brian Kilmeade. Back in a moment.

The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmeade. Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders? To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela. That is Alyssa Slotnik, Senator from Michigan, who won by just one point and fancies herself a moderate, who evidently put this tape together talking about a message to the military. You don't have to obey illegal orders. Really? What are legal orders? Well, I don't really want to be stationed in... I don't want to be stuck in the USS Gerald Ford. I was supposed to come home. I'm going to disobey orders. I'm against this operation. Or I don't want to stay in Syria anymore. I'm against this operation. It's not my job to watch all those terrorists in those prisons. So why not just pick and choose what orders to disobey? It's just crazy. And Slotny come out, cut the tape and says, the only thing you could cite is comments that President Trump has made in the past, not orders that he's done in the past. I thought it was, I don't get it. Tyler Friedrich Merz joined us now, the CEO of nine line apparel. Friedrich Merz is a former Apache helicopter pilot, a turn special operator, air mission commander. Tyler, welcome. Hey, thank you so much for having me on the show. Tyler, I was astounded, disappointed with that tape. Now, whether it's treasonous or not, you know, you know the military. Do you need to be briefed from some lawmaker about what your rights are or what you shouldn't, shouldn't do? Yeah, I don't know if the lessons at West Point have changed or the orders of our commander-in-chief are our orders unless they are in great, in great opposition to the Constitution of the United States. You know, we have a right to uphold the Constitution. Until you have an unlawful order, you must obey and follow all of them, or you will find yourself in Leavenworth. Yeah, I mean, the other thing is National Guard. You know, National Guard have other jobs. I'm sure there's a reluctance a lot to go, okay, I got to do this operation. There's a flood in Iowa. I got to do this operation. Hurricane relief here. Or you had to go to Afghanistan. And that was not really why you should, you know, signed up for the Guard. Now you got to go to Chicago. But wait a second. There's a senator from Michigan who says that might not be lawful. You don't have to obey. There's nothing good about what this statement says. No, it's going to affect our military, and it's not going to affect this senator. And she's going to continue to go home. She's not going to find herself in court martial. But I'll tell you, you know, you have orders to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, myself. I spent a good amount of time in South America fighting these cartels. They're not the greatest places on earth. But that's our job. That's what we signed up to do. And we will follow all lawful orders of the United States commander-in-chief. So. This operation in Venezuela, we have unbelievable amount of assets in the region. They're staged Puerto Rico, General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in Puerto Rico at this hour. Maduro says he wants to speak to Trump. Trump says he'll speak to him. How do you see this all playing out?

Our commander chief laid it out pretty clearly. The whole F around and find out, he's finding out what that means. The cartels for so long, and Venezuela militias have operated with absolute impunity. They've built entire shadow states of trafficking, corruption, and violence, and they directly endanger the U.S. by trafficking toxic materials and substances into our country. And there's no longer a commander chief that's willing to allow this to continue. And we're going to act decisively and permanently. Tyler, what are some of the ways this could end? Give me some of the scenarios. So these are very complex operations, right? Because you have different groups and networking, the shadow governments, the trafficking networks, you know. are extremely hard to track and to monitor. And then when you do actually find these individuals, you know, a lot of times you are not giving the authorizations to act decisively. You know, it's the whole idea between hostile intent and hostile act. You know, in Iraq, there'd be guys digging holes in the middle of the night, you know, on main supply roads. Now, that's a hostile intent. You know, I don't need to wait for them to, in place an IID, stand back and pull the trigger. You know, and that's what we've been doing for so long. We've been allowing all of this toxic. you know, fentanyl, cocaine, things to flood our streets and allowing this shadow government to enrich themselves, you know, on the death and destruction that they're occurring in the United States. So the actions that we're taking by showing, you know, we're not going to be just sending special operators and doing pinpoint strikes. We're bringing the full force of our military might, you know, the Navy. the Air Force, the Marines, we're willing and able to go and crush this regime. And I think, you know, speaking of someone who's operated in this area for so long, you know, our soldiers are excited to take the fight to them. So do you see us on the ground there? Do you see us taking on the Venezuelan Army on the ground? So for, again, the longest time we've had joint operations. There's things called foreign internal defense. We'll go to Peru, Colombia, other South American countries, and we'll teach their military how to take the fight to the narcos operating within their country. You can't do that in Venezuela because they are the shadow government. There is no desire to operate with. They're malicious because they are enriching himself, you know, through this trade. So there is only one action. It's for our boots on the ground to go and take decisive actions. That's not what everyone wants to hear. That's a... Something that, you know, as a military member myself, I understand that the grave danger that individuals be putting himself in. But that's what we signed up to do. We signed up to take the fight to the enemy so that my children don't have to worry about, you know, their safety and having this poison flooding our streets for years. Not allowing these people to operate with full impunity, you know, has to stop. And Tyler, it's unfortunate. Yep, drugs aside. The other thing is we're letting China.

Russia, Iran get a foothold in our hemisphere. We're allowing Cuba's philosophy that's failed philosophy of communism to flood into different countries within our hemisphere. We haven't bothered to look at what China is extracting in terms of their natural resources, getting a foothold in Peru, building a port there. I mean, how long are we going to allow that to happen? And this is one way, take the biggest country, the biggest problem with the most natural resources, and take them down. It does. And obviously, it does have one of the largest depositories of natural resources. It is not just about the things that they're exporting that are illegal. It's the things that they're exporting to our non-partner nations where, you know, none of their citizens are seeing any of the benefits of the exports. It is going to the pure communist regime. The top 1% is consuming all of the profits and enriching themselves. And I do agree that. Besides stopping illegal export, we want to go and create legal exports of natural resources so that that country can rebuild itself. You know, that they have devastated the population. Their currency has gone to absolutely zero. You know, their population is starving. And I know. you know, as I have friends in that region and in that country, you know, they're welcoming us with open arms to come and make a change. Maduro has to go. I don't think he's going to give up without a fight. But I do know that our secretary of war will do anything and everything necessary to be decisive and to take the fight to the enemy. Preferably, we don't have. boots on the ground. Preferably, we can continue these targeted strikes, but we're barely, you know, we're scratching the surface. When are we going to find out if the generals are capable of flipping or have we found that out at all? Because, you know, the generals evidently have been very well paid off? They're very wealthy in themselves. Do they want to give up that lifestyle? Or is this their best way of preserving that lifestyle? I think it's the latter. You know, they have, you know, seen what happens when governments in Iraq, you know, are toppled. They don't have a future of the next regime, you know, hopefully a legitimate... representative regime that actually cares about the people, I don't think that there's a place for them. And I think they know that. And I think that they are going to continue to fight tooth and nail to hold on to that power. You know, when the government does topple, they have no future in that country. And rightfully so. You know, they've devastated their own country. And there's no place for them in the future. So just some of the pushback he's getting from Congress, even from his own party. I'm talking about the president. Cut 49, Senator Rand Paul. But I think once there's an invasion of Venezuela or if they decide to re-up the subsidies and the gifts to Ukraine, I think you'll see a splintering and a fracturing of the movement that has supported the president because I think a lot of people, including myself, were attracted to the president because of his reticence to get us involved in foreign war. You recognize that mindset, and a lot of it comes from the right now.

And no one wants to be involved in a foreign war, an unjust war. You know, everyone can look retroactively at what Iraq, right? The things that were told to us that the things that became true, you know, as someone who spent five plus deployments in that region, you know, I don't take this lightly by saying, you know, no one wants to go to World War is hell, but there's a necessary evil. And we do need to take this decisive action. And putting all cards on the table, you know, might be enough to go and have people throw down their arms and actually allow for a new diplomatic government to take place. But I don't see that occurring without boots on the ground. I think it's a necessary evil. And it might be a unpopular opinion within our party. But I can say for, you know, military members, that that's what we're here to do. You know, we're here to do to fight and win wars. That's why we've renamed Department of Defense, the Department of War. You know, there are some things that are worth fighting for. And this is our region. This is our, you know, backyard. That there should be, you know, careful diplomacy. But at some point, diplomacy comes to an end. And this is that point. All right, Tyler Friedrich Merz, we look forward to talking to you along the way as this whole thing unfolds. My hope is a phone call from the president says you got one option. You should leave and you go to Russia wherever you need, but you got to go. Take your generals with you. Yep, and the CIA is hopefully, they made it clear the CIA is on the ground doing their work, which is kind of interesting to expose that. Tyler, thanks so much. Thank you, sir. You got it. I'm going to come back. I got some of your emails to read, and your phone calls 1-8-666-9. Brian Kilmeade. It's Brian Kilmeade. He's so busy. He'll make your headspin. It's Brian Kilmeade. He asked about your comment called the president of fascist, and your answer was, But with President Trump and I have been clear about our physicians and our views. Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? I've spoken about that. That's okay. You can just say yes. Okay. It's easier. It's easier than explaining it. I don't mind. So that's the President of the United States in the Oval Office, having a good time with Zohran Mamdani. I just saw Rudy Giuliani says he was sick and see him in the Oval Office. Well, he's a mayor of New York City. So the president met with the governor of New York State. The president was talking to Gavin Newsom. He talked to Andrew Cuomo on a regular basis. He obviously talked to you. DeBosio, he wasn't. DeBosio was writing Black Lives Matter in front of Trump Tower. He's an absolute clown boy. But he's got to meet with him. You know, there's no way this is going to last. But my belief is that Trump, number one, he likes a winner. I'm going to play that too. There's somebody else who, Jonathan Allen agrees with that. And I'll play that shortly. He likes a winner. But number two is he sees the Democratic Party really split. Democratic Party, the DNC, by the way, in debt. Did you know they had to take out a line of credit in order to finance their Virginia and New Jersey races? Do you believe that? A line of credit. They didn't have enough donations and they're still trying to pay off the debts of Kamala Harris.

So having said that, this is divide the party. 30%, you saw it. It's estimated that 30% of socialists are going to challenge incumbents on the Democratic side in the House. 30%. You know, you got Nadler's seat is open to a socialist that was at Parkland school shooting, David Hoggai. And then there's the one who's going to run against Hakeem Jeffries. Might be primary Hakeem Jeffries in New York City. They're trying to stop them. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to stop it, but she can't. You know, you got Gillibrand not endorsing Zohran Mamdani, Kathy Hochul, not getting an endorsement from Zohran Mamdani. So the president says, wait a second, what if I take this guy that on the national forum, on the national stage, has no future, not individually, but the whole movement. Bernie Sanders can't get elected. But Bernie Sanders could get nomination. And I'm pretty sure he can't get elected. I hope the country hasn't changed that much. But if you elevate the socialist part and then you get the moderate part, they're not going to know what to do. So the president goes in there and says instead of saying, oh, I'm going to run against the president and I'm going to make the president the bad guy. And if you don't agree with me, then you must like Trump. And the president goes, no, he's good guy. He's all right. I liked him. Hey, we both pulling for New York. We have a lot in common. Any questions? And to me, it's because he wants to further divide and confuse the Democratic Party who don't know which way is up. So one of the people. who saw the same thing as me is Jonathan Allen. And here's what he said on Sunday. Let me just find the number here. Excuse me. Jonathan Martin, cut 47. It reminds me of the old line that America has no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interest. Donald Trump's interest is being surrounded by life's winners. Zohran Mamdani, is a winner. It's a win-win. Trump gets to be around a young, charismatic winner who happens to be from New York, and he's basking in the reflected glory of this 34-year-old mayor-elect. And if you're the new mayor, you get forbearance, whether it's weeks or months. You get to keep the federal dollar flow into New York, and you get to keep the National Guard away from New York, at least for the time being. And that's what Jonathan Martin is referring to as the fact the president announced, I think on Sunday night, that for now, like I'm doing in San Francisco, I'm holding off to see if they can handle things themselves. Illegal immigrants running wild, criminals running wild, illegal immigrants taking invaluable jobs, taking housing. If you guys can handle it, I'll leave it to other areas. For example, in Memphis has been an unadulterated success. Big time. Now they're going to be sending those units into New Orleans to do the best they can over there. And I imagine they'll also try for Baton Rouge. And I think that's important too. Because when it comes to crime and immigration, what you've got to do is straighten out these cities and provide free security. So Pam Bondi has an update. It's going to come out today on her Memphis Safe Task Force. Remember, the governor asked to come in. The mayor did not push back on it. He said, I have an opportunity here to try to bring. some law and order into the place Elvis used to call home. 116 children found. 482 firearms seized. 3,000 plus, just under 2,900 and change have been arrested since the mission began. And you give the people, the average person, the working class person, usually run down areas where crime is prevalent. They don't worry about the people with money for the most part. The gated communities usually pay for their own guards. Those are the people that feel appreciated.

But he hit pause on sending the National Guard into New York after the Zohran Mamdani meeting. So if they could have a working relationship, what's going to happen is they're looking at, I couldn't believe these numbers. The mayor of New York City, whoever it is, and it's going to be Zohran Mamdani, is walking in with a pretty big deficit, a deficit of $8 billion, according to the citizens' budget committee. even if he gets all the tax hikes he wants, he still has to cut because how do you free buses are going to cost $1 billion? Free child care. By the way, isn't it funny? I say free and then it costs free child care, $6 billion. The housing plans that he outlined will cost the city tens of billions of dollars. So good luck with that. It's not going to work. The one thing the president sees eye to eye with, that is affordability. Everybody knows affordability. He says that was our word before it was a democratic word. He used it to effectiveness. So right now, according to a CBS poll, NBC poll, the majority of Americans say costs of goods are up. 85% say groceries are up. 78% say utilities are up. 67% say health care is up. 66% say housing is up. So Zohran Mamdani, next time he wants to unload and says it's federal policies, might want to think twice because it's got a relationship. I'm sure we know what I'm sure Trump said at the end of this. Here's my number. Call me you need anything. You need any clarification. Give me a call. Let's set up a line of communication between each other. Doesn't have to be a brawl. And then Keith Jeffrey says, I never get invited to the White House. Chuck Schumer says, we're not even speaking, but the 34-year-old mayor-elect had a great visit, didn't he?

Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sewing division. It's Brian Kilmeade. Hi, everyone. Can't wait to get started here on the Brian Kilmeade. Major progress over in Geneva. Now we've got to see if the Russians are going to show any give. And you know who could pressure him to show give? President Trump, this would be a big moment for him to use that relationship. They very rarely say anything bad about Trump. I love to beat up on Biden, Obama. I think they were pretty polite to Bush, but that was before it became clear they were our enemy again. Jeffrey Lax is going to be with us this hour, you know, working against anti-Semitism on a daily basis as a professor at Cooney College here in New York City as a law professor. He's going to talk about what's happening, what happened on Friday, I think it was, or Thursday night when protesters decide to show up outside of synagogue in New York City and harass and threaten Jews just because they're Jewish. Do you believe this? Julian Epstein standing by too. So we'll follow that. Also some lighter stuff. First Lady Melania Trump will welcome the White House Christmas tree ahead of Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the president's got a part in a couple of turkeys today. Have some fun. New York Times Square, New Year's Eve Ball is unveiled today. Waterford Crystal and everything like that. It's a big publicity thing to get ready. for the New Year's Eve celebration, which is the most overrated celebration in New York City ever. If you've ever done it, you realize in the middle of it, this is terrible. I'm freezing, and they don't want me move or go to the bathroom. So let's get to the big three. Number three. And we also spoke about the importance of understanding what it is that hurts New Yorkers in their pockets. It's their rent. It's their child care. It's their utilities. That is Zohraim Dani, the mayor elect. He was very pleased with this meeting with President Trump. They talked about the economy. They talked about affordability. Where they differ is how to achieve a great economy and make the country more affordable. Diometrically opposed economically, their approaches are very different, and I know who's going to win. Number two. We study what's lawful and what's not lawful, and the Democrats stunt insinuating that they're illegal or unconstitutional orders. It's downright dangerous. That is so true. Dems treason tape fallout continues. As Dems try and make sense of the idiotic appeal to our warfighters to stand up against the current commander-in-chief. About what? Number one. One of the things that happens when you've been involved in this now for 10 months is you get a pretty good sense of what the priorities and the red lines and the important issues are for both sides. And so that allowed us to create a foundational document. That is Marco Rubio, who's feeling very encouraged about the recent talks in Geneva that ended just hours ago. They're making progress with the U.S., with Europe, and Ukraine. They're marking it up. They've got to send it back to Russia. How is the president going to get Vladimir Putin to show some gift, which he has not been able to when it comes to security for Ukraine? They're not going to take a piece of paper. They're not going to take a firm hamshake. They need guarantees. And there is... Western powers that said we will put some troops on the ground. That is evidently a non-starter with Russia. Is the whole thing a non-starter with Russia? I hope the president uses his power and persuasion over Russia and let him know things are going to get a lot worse with more sanctions and maybe unfreezing his wealth stuck in Denmark and then giving it in front of him right to Ukraine to buy more weapons from us.

Let's bring in Julian Epstein. Julian usually comes to us from the democratic perspective, but not from the socialist perspective. Julian, Woody, how do you look at this peace plan now that Marco Rubio comes out in some way support of it? Well, I think the peace plan that got leaked on Thursday, Friday, Brian, was not good. Terrible. It gave away the shop. It was surrender to Ukraine. And I think... That is not the way to a Nobel Peace Prize. And I think Trump, in the Trump administration, are properly walking that back now. I mean, look, I think a number of things have to get decided. I think one is Ukraine's future security and Europe's commitment, possible U.S. commitment to their future security, which is sort of up in the air, which was not good in the plan. I think, secondly, the amount of territory that the plan proposes to give away is a lot. So I like that Marco Rubio was engaged. I think he is the superstar in the administration. I like the fact they're walking it back. And, you know, Vladimir Putin, who has been flying drones throughout Europe. I mean, there have been thousands of drones flying over European skies, Western European skies. Vladimir Putin shows that he is, he's got future plans. And so I think this is a really important moment. And I'm glad that Trump is walking this plan back. Here's what General Keene said on America's newsroom after Marco Rubio's comments, cut 51. What we really see here is the president's determination to end this war. I mean, we saw what happened as a result of the Alaska summit. You know, Vladimir Putin made promises that he didn't keep. And then all the European leaders came to Washington with Volodymyr Zelensky. And they all pretty much were unified. in their support for Ukraine and also for a peace process going forward. And where are we today? The reality is the president is still trying to get that war stop. And we're putting together a process to do that. So they went out to change the proposal significantly to the point where Ukraine's relatively pleased by it, according to some reports. Now we're going to see if the president can put the arm on Vladimir Putin. Look, I see no sign whatsoever that Vladimir Putin is willing to be reasonable here. And I think, you know, the mistake that Joe Biden made, this was Joe Biden's war. I think it's fair for Trump to say that was he slow walked the weapons. He slow walked offensive weapons into Ukraine early in the process. He sort of led from behind. And I think that if... If Vladimir Putin is not going to come to the table on reasonable terms, I hope the West will give Ukraine the weaponry it needs to push Vladimir Putin back through military mates. So it's, you know, and I think Trump is getting to the right place on this. Yeah, I guess we're going to see. Here's the ambassador Ukraine says there's a second document involved in this. Cut 16. That is the, like, document specifying the intention that U.S. government is committed to providing security assurances, which are like something like the Article 5 of the Washington-NATA treaty. So it's still very different, and it specifies it's been in a public access, so it's been publicly leaked as well, so that U.S. will stand up together.

where the allies in case of the Russian aggression from the territory of the Russian Federation. So that's going to be key. Troops on the ground and what is the U.S. commitment? If they get invaded again, is the U.S. going to go in? Well, I think what's on the table from the Trump administration right now is European troops on the ground and U.S. aerial support. And that might do the trick. That's part of it. That's sort of one half of this deal. What are futures? What is the future security? And I think particularly with the drones flying all throughout Europe, they've spotted thousands of drones flying across European skies in recent months. I think Europe is really worried that. Vladimir Putin has plans beyond Ukraine. So I think security is a big part of this. I also think they are asking for a lot of territory, not just Donbos, but beyond the Donbos region. I think that is a, you know, that is a bitter pill for Volodymyr Zelensky to swallow. So there, I am told there is some discussion on that as well. So we'll see where it ends up. But I think, you know, no one wants a long more here. Everyone wants this thing to be done. There's all kinds of reasons. People are being killed. I think Trump's concern is genuine about. how much he hates war and he hates seeing innocent people being slaughtered. It's bad for the economy. There's all kinds of reasons to want to see this war end, but you sort of don't want to give away the shot just because you're desperate for an agreement. And no agreement is better than a bad agreement. And I think that's where Trump has come around to. And that would mean more commitment of European. and U.S. military support, even if we're selling it and we're getting something in exchange for it, the way I think Trump has smartly designed. But I don't see any movement coming from Vladimir Putin right now. Yeah, I want to bring you to another area, and I couldn't believe that tape that was put out on Thursday talking about military veterans and Slotnick, I think, is only a CIA. She was a CIA officer. They came out and put out this tape, and we know it already, that you do not have to defay illegal, obey illegal orders. I didn't get it. Trump said to me on Friday in our interview, he said, I thought it was a joke at first. I thought it was AI. I thought it was a spoof to have these officers go, you don't have to pay these laws. So Elissa Slotkin was one of the people. In fact, I think she was the one who came up with this idea, was forced to explain herself. What were you up to? What laws are you talking about? Cut 31. Look, if you're going back to Nuremberg, right, that, well, they told me to do it. That's why I murdered people is not an excuse. If you look at popular culture, there's like you watch, you know, a few good men. Like we have plenty of examples since World War II in Vietnam where people were told to follow illegal orders and they did it and they were prosecuted for it. So the best thing for people to do is go to their JAG officer, their local law enforcement or a legal officer in their unit.

and ask for some explanation, ask for help. And that's what we've been advising people to do. So she says that people have been coming up to her constantly. I never heard of any of this. During the Biden years, you think that people thought it was a good idea to leave Afghanistan with billions of equipment there and watch them do parades with it for the next three years? What if I don't want to watch the Syrian prisons over in Syria right now? What if I feel as though the Iraq war right in the middle? Not going like I thought. I don't want to go back again. Do you see the ramifications of statements like this? Whoa. First of all, on the production quality of the video, I just think Democrats should stop doing videos because every time they do something, it looks like a Saturday-in-I skit. It just looked goofy and stupid and uncoordinated and poorly delivered. And I think it made the members of Congress look like a joke. Secondly, on the law, it is really, really dangerous and reckless what they were advising. A legal order from a president, a military order from a president is presumptively legal. a serviceman wants to challenge it, they have got to demonstrate in a court of law that it is manifestly illegal and that there is no rational basis under which or there's no rational doubt about the legality. None of Trump's orders in question meet that standard. The use of the National Guard, the going after drug ships coming out of Venezuela, none of them are manifestly illegal. None of them have no rational doubt as to the illegality. What they are... suggesting to servicemen is something that could get them court-martialed and is in fact punishable by death for the servicemen that defy a military order. It is incredibly irresponsible. There's nothing that's going on right now with any of Trump's orders that remotely fall into the category of something a servicemen can legally defy. And this was just another... sort of really goofy attempt to get attention on something that ended up backfiring on Democrats. So I want you to hear on a different note. Before I let you go, Julian, Michelle Obama was interviewed recently, and she said this about America. I'm sorry. And she said basically, America is not ready. Don't waste my time. You're not ready to elect a woman president after Hillary and Kamala Harris. Listen to what Bill Maher said. Tell me if you agree. Their statement. I was rather shocked by. Just because we weren't ready or didn't like the candidates, Hillary and Kamala Harris, that's, you know.

Doesn't mean we're not ready for a woman. I think it's a bad attitude. I do. I mean, we said we weren't ready for a black president and someone, I can't remember who. Maybe she remembers. So maybe it just has to be the right one. So who's right there? Michelle Obama or Bill Moore? Well, Bill Maher clearly, and it is this really nasty tick on the left that many have, including politicians, and I guess maybe Michelle, that America is a bad place. America is an oppressive place. America is unfair to people. This is the most fair, most equal opportunity country that's ever existed on the planet Earth. And, you know, I guess Michelle Obama forgot about what happened in 2016, where Hillary won the popular vote. Was the country not, was a majority of voters not ready, regardless of what happened in the electoral, was a majority of the country not ready in 2016? They elected a woman vice president, who in many people's mind was sort of not a competent vice president, but they still elected a woman vice president in 2020. I think it's this blame America first mentality. This is, you know, I'm a victim. And it's a little bit hard to swallow for people. that are looking at what is what's their net where they have three houses three big mansions worth what 30 40 million dollars or more yeah how many more and net worth it net worth getting into the hundreds of millions of dollars and they're complaining what a unfair country this was that elected them twice to the white house it just i think it rubs a lot of people the really wrong way and i think this book tour of hers is this this tone that she's taking um with a whole bit about let me explain to you the hair And we're doing this for, you know, to meet white beauty standards. I think a lot of that stuff just sort of really rubs people the wrong way. And it's completely unnecessary. And it's very, very divisive. I think so, too. Julian Epstein, thanks so much. He served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and staff directors of the House Oversight Committee from 96 to 2001. Still very active. Julian, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Brian. You got it. When we come back, we'll open up the phones. And we'll also going to go over some other things that we're talking about today, including... Weird things Democrats say, and what is Marjorie Taylor Greene up to? I'll explain. Don't go anywhere. Brian Kilmeade will be right back.

Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kilmeade. I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It's very bad for our country. And it's been something I've thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated. is that we, I'm only responsible for myself and my own words and actions. And I am committed. And I've been working on this a lot lately to put down the knives and politics. I really just want to see people be kind to one another. Really? What are you talking about? Be kind to one another. No one told you not to be kind. What's being kind? Being kind is extending health care subsidies, really? Because you also want to be fiscally responsible. Being kind is expanding Obamacare? All right, that's a policy thing. And then you said, I want to be kind, Epstein files. Why all of a sudden you're interested? You weren't kind before? And now it's because Donald Trump, almost everything he does, you're against. The Venezuela operation, you're against. Meanwhile, when she got elected, some of the things she said were so off the charts, so hairbrained that the Democrat said, I can't let her on any committees. And then when the Republicans get the majority, Kevin McCarthy says, Marjorie, we're going to put you on a committee. I'm going to rehab you. And then same thing with Johnson, always looking out for it. And President Trump, always been great. You want to get in there and see anybody? You can go into the Oval Office and see her. Got it. And then she decides to go off the reservation. She loves going on the view, loves being welcomed on CNN. And then she loves that life. The Adam Kinsinger, life of the Adam Kinsinger tour, along with Liz Cheney, they're all welcome. So then she resigns and she wants some sympathy. Good luck with that. You're also resigning like a day after you get invested with your congressional salary. All these issues were out and about until Donald Trump reportedly said, it's not a good idea for you to run for the Senate. Your polling numbers are terrible. I'm not going to endorse you. I got to get people who's going to win that Jon Ossoff seat. So you didn't get it. And ever since that moment, she's been pretty much anti-Trump. So now she has got 32% approval rating with Republicans. The president has 87% with the Republicans. So she decides, I don't want to be primary and I don't want to run. I don't know if anyone's going to primary her. I think she's in a district. She's going to win just blindfolded. So she's out. Okay. Is there any loss? I mean, these are the people that are off the rails to be famous. They're there to be famous, not to get worked on. And it's different from being available. That's not to be famous. That's why I want to be part of every issue, Lindsey Graham and Mike Waltz. They're always out there doing things. That's why they're always on camera. Other people just want to say wild things like Matt Bill Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And that's how they want to be known. They can raise a lot of money that way. So good riddance. I think the wacky, me first attitude has to go on both sides. And she's one of them.

From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Kilmeade. Mr. Mayor-elect, just to be very clear, do you think that President Trump is a fascist? And after President Trump said that, I said yes. So you do. And that's something that I've said in the past, I say today. And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement about the politics that has brought us to this moment. So that is the mayor elect, obviously, reflecting on his visit to the White House. I meet the press yesterday. And he's not telling the truth. He did not say yes when asked to his fascist. Trump jumped in and said, don't worry about it. You know, you can't win on that one. So don't worry about it. And he didn't say it. But they met and talked about affordability. That's where they hit. Hit it off. But they didn't hit it. They're not going to hit it off when it comes to how to make things more affordable. It's impossible. Jeffrey Lax joins us now, Cooney Professor of Law at City College right here in New York City. Jeff, welcome back. Your thoughts about that Oval Office meeting. Well, you know, it's funny. All the media is describing it as this love fest between the two. But if you really watch it carefully, and I think you've analyzed it really well, Brian, the only person, and he's charming Trump. Trump knows how to. He's going all over the world talking to actual despots like she and all the people throughout the Middle East. So Trump's tone was cordial and polite and friendly. But if you really watch Zohran Mamdani, he was not, he was like biting his tongue the entire time wanting to say all these terrible things. And you could tell he held back. But when the reporter very pointedly asked him, is Trump still a despot? Is he still a fascist? Mom Dany didn't say no. He wanted. And then the next day on Sunday, he was, or a couple days later he was talking about that, he is still a fascist. So it's a one-way street there. So what happened on Thursday at that famous synagogue in New York City? Horrible. I mean, so disgusting on so many levels, Brian, that you have these disgusting radical Islamist, Marxist, extremists, who were actually blocking the entryway to a place, the house of worship. And Jewish people couldn't get it. And they were being harassed. They were being yelled at. There were threats, you know, kill the IDF, globalized the interfidal, some of the stuff you've already heard many, many times over the years. But this is a very special situation and different than some of the other ones we've encountered over the past couple of years. And also more concerning to me and to many Jews, and not just Jews, to everybody in New York City for what's going to happen up to Zohran Mamdani for the next four years. Because there is federal law that prohibits specifically blocking the entrance to a... house of worship. Whether it's a church, synagogue,

whatever. And you can't harass people going into a house of worship. It's called the FACE Act. The FACE Act is federally enforceable, and it could lead to civil violations. It could even lead to criminal violations. And so that is a, I was so glad to hear Harvey Dillon say that the DOJ is investigating this because I think this should be pursued. And also, whatever happened to freedom of speech, you know, the left has been yelling that all this stuff that these horrible people are doing to Jews, which is not freedom of speech, it's harassment, and sometimes it's physical violence. But whatever happened to the freedom of association to go into your place of worship and talk about whatever the hell you want. I mean, that is protected by the First Amendment. So Zohran Mamdani came out, for those who don't know, Zohran Mamdani came out and he actually called the synagogue, the one that was wrong in this situation. He said that they were supporting settlements in violation of international law. What a disgusting thing to say, which also violates several laws, but I've gone on very long here, so I'll stop here. Yeah, I mean, so you have that, and then Jessica Tisch apologized. She said the cops did not do a good job setting up and clearing out, correct? Yeah, they didn't. They didn't, and I don't know exactly why. Obviously, she apologized. Why interrupt that ceremony on that day and that synagogue? Was there any special reason? Yeah, Nefesh Benephish is the organization. That's a great question, by the way. Nefish Benafish is an organization that helps people make Alia. Alia is a Jewish concept. It is considered one of the most beautiful things you can do in the religion of Judaism, which is moved to the land of Israel. Nothing to do with the state of Israel. I want to be very clear about that. It's moving to the land of Israel. That's all it does. It helps people who were already interested. in moving to Israel to live there. It helps them do it. That's it. That's what this group does. Now, what Zohran Mamdani was saying is that, you know, this violates ICC law. I want to be very clear about this, Brian. The ICC is the United States is not only not a party to the ICC. The United States has aggressively under every president since Clinton. Every single president has rejected joining the Rome Statute, which is what enacted the ICC. and has basically referred to it as an abhorrent rule. And you have countries around the world who want to take over American sovereignty. What is so concerning here, let me just really put a point on this, Brian. What is so concerning here is Zohran Mamdani clearly is showing that he does not accept and he actually rejects American sovereignty, the American Constitution, and the American law, because he is forbidden from enforcing ICC law. In fact, The United States has a treaty with over 100 countries. And if anybody is ever arrested under the ICC, that they will not follow those directions. If it's a U.S., it's really made to protect. And that's what he was going to use to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should he come here.

Yeah, not only to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, I really want to make this very clear because a lot of people think it's just Benjamin Netanyahu. No, it applies to any service person in the U.S. military. Think about it logically for a second. There are all these wars that countries around the world have condemned, including Afghanistan. And the ICC actually has began investigations against U.S. servicemen and service women because of what happened in Afghanistan. which means they could be arrested somewhere anywhere in the world and be prosecuted, taking away U.S. sovereignty. So, yes, it applies to Benjamin Netanyahu. Zohran Mamdani is forbidden under federal law. In fact, there are multiple federal statutes that say that he should be arrested if he ever tries to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu here. He is not allowed to do it under American law, and you're not allowed to arrest American servicemen and American service women. It applies to them, too. So the other thing is you chronicled another uprising, an anti-Zionist group back a walkout from an interfaith campus event to protest the halil leader. So tell me about this story. Yeah, another horrific incident in CUNY, City College, where you have an imam who is part of an interfa... And all these interfaith events are such garbage, Brian. It's just used by these universities to cover up and to shield themselves from despicable behavior. It was an interfaith event, an imam was on the panel. And the imam said, if you are a Muslim, you must leave the room. You must leave the room. And there were about... 100 people who left the room, Muslims who left the room. And this discriminated not just against Jews. Actually, there were fewer Jews there than Christians. So there are 20 Christians in the room. We're looking around like, what's going on and Jewish people. And so that's clearly discrimination. And that's being investigated as well. And Kathy Hochul said, this is unacceptable. And city college has to do something about it. I don't know what the hell she is talking about. They answer to her. It is her fault. This is all happening. Remember, Brian, the head of discrimination at CUNY is a former CARE Minnesota director who led the BDS movement at CARE Minnesota. That is the head of discrimination at CUNY. That is why this is happening. It's going to keep happening until Kathy Hochul or hopefully at least Elise Stefanik in a year. stops it from happening. Unbelievable. Jeff, it's unbelievable. I don't know how much you're following things over in Gaza, but the old site they took out a route tunnel, and they say it's a game changer in Gaza. They said they found a tunnel that's attached to 80 separate rooms that including the command of operations. So if you're going to get to ending Hamas, you've got to stop them from going underground. They say this is a game changer. Seven kilometers long, 25 kilometers deep, 80 hideouts. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I really hope so. And I hope the world comes together on this. Listen, there's going to be a lot of ups and downs here. And, you know, I hope it lands the way Trump has planned it to land. Israel is going to, Israel has to protect itself. They do. And that's what they're doing. They're protecting America would act no differently if they were subjected to October 7th, which we were on September 1st. So they're doing the right thing. And I hope I really pray.

That Trump's plan works out. Yeah, and let's see. They killed the Hezbo leader yesterday in the fourth floor of an apartment building, which is pretty amazing. And that's a problem. They keep coming back and Iran keeps supplying them. Jeff Lax, thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Brian. Good to see you. All right, same here. So just to get to the bottom of, just give you an idea what's going on. So the IDF uncovering one of Gaza's largest and most complex underground routes, as I gave you the stats. Israel says the demolition of that tunnel marks a strategic blow to Hamas and paves the path to defeat. Quote, the destruction of this tunnel as well as many others like it or similar, as well as other terror facilities, pushes Hamas right to the edge. That, according to Professor Kobe Michael, senior research at the Institute for National Security Studies over in Israel. It's one of the longest, most complicated tunnels that have ever been discovered, but it is not the only one. So we'll see what happens. If you want to chat at peace in that area, you've got to get rid of Hamas. But I also found out is there's a comprehensive effort in Gaza, including changing the curriculum of the schools that is already underway. You listen to the Brian Kilmeade. Real talk, real guests, real insight, where curiosity meets conversation. It's the Brian Kilmeade.

A talk show that's real. This is the Brian Kilmeade. Sponsored by Previgin. Previgin, made for your brain. For a year, Biden was, I don't talk to you. And then he had to. Because it's Saudi Arabia. These are the kind of mature... Yes, difficult kind of compromises that mature people make. And Biden was there a year later fist bumping the guy that he said he wouldn't talk to because you have to, because it's Saudi Arabia. They have the oil. Yeah. And they're the counterweight to Iran. That's practical. That is Bill Morrigan. And that's something that people in 9-11, listen, I was on the air in 9-11. I know people that died in 9-11. Nobody has to tell me about Saudi Arabia and how many hijackers were there from Saudi Arabia. But it wasn't a government-sponsored event. And that government was not the government that's in power now. They're not perfect. They're still Middle Eastern. But this 34-year-old, now he's probably 36-year-old. Think about that 25 years ago. You can't blame Mohammed bin Salman for 9-11. And now that he changes the curriculum is starting to expose the sports and buy these leagues and try to give people a sense of entrepreneurship, give women additional rights, just because, well, it's like 1990 over there prior to women having the ability to vote. True. So what do we wait for the whole world to catch up to us before we have dealings with them? That's why the president didn't like that the president's friendly with Mohammed bin Salman. You know what he likes? The guy's going to invest a trillion dollars, even if he gets close to a trillion. Not quite a trillion. That's going to be factories and investment here for Americans, for Americans to work. So that's what he likes. He's not coming over here to make a friend if he was. I guess you could say that he's going to be doing business deals when he's done as president. But that's a practical side to Bill Maher that he understands. And, you know, I think John Stewart went off and said, how can you be so polite? And these Republicans better do that X, Y, and Z. And then he starts cursing like crazy. And I'm thinking to myself, he's cursed so much with all the bleeps, I don't even know what he means. But there's a reason why Saudi Arabia is a counter. It's definitely preferable to Iran. And I know there's people on the right who thinks Iran's been misjudged, that they're really great people. And they don't attack anybody. They're the number one terror exporter in the world. They're still trying to kill President Trump. They almost executed one of these former Iranian politicians right over in Brooklyn. That guy's going to jail for life. So I think it's really important.

to point that out. I just think he makes a lot of sense. And I think he found a venue. He found an area in the American dialogue that might have alienated him from people like Robert De Niro. Good luck with that. But he's still not going to vote for Trump. He's still not going to vote for a Republican. He said, I'd be open to it. But he said the one thing about Republicans, if I ask him to come on, they will come on. And I think that's good. personally. So there's a few things up in the year. I get it with Venezuela. You say this president doesn't, why it wasn't supposed to be an interventionist president. Yes, but he's got to watch our backyard to not be an interventionist president while watching China come into Central and South America is not responsible not to ignore that. You know, to say, you know, we should be focused on China and not Europe is not to understand history and not understand that Russia and China have an alliance and that China is fueling Russia and they're seeing the way the world's reacting to a land grab like Russia did because they're looking to grab Taiwan at any moment and they want to see the world's reaction because what they want and what they need. is our markets. They make all this stuff and China doesn't buy any of it. They need Europe. They need Australia. They need North America to buy their stuff. And if there's a massive world boycott, it'll bring their economy to its knees. Now they're seeing that Europe hasn't thoroughly cut off oil and gas purchases from Russia. And now they're seeing that perhaps Ukraine's being pushed into a treaty that would just reinforce Russia's interventionist. aggressive behavior. Do people you understand? This is not a philosophy. This is a fact. This is not a theory. The domino theory. This is a fact. This is nobody wants to get rich off this. It's not Raytheon saying, let's keep war going so I can make more missiles. The problem is there's not enough companies like Raytheon making missiles in rockets. That's the problem. But overall, the president's going to win or lose not on his Venezuelan policy, not on his Middle East policy, not on his Ukraine policy. He's going to win or lose on his domestic policy, his economic policy, and he knows that. And that's why all these jobs that are coming back, these places that are being built, are going to be jobs, and it's going to be positive. And that's why he looked at what Zohran Mamdani's doing. And he could actually... use them as an example of what not to do. I could see him running in six months, seeing my dummy trying to do all his free buses, all his free things, while New York is overrun with crime. and overrun with their budget, their $9 billion in debt, he's going to look to spend all this money and say, look, you got my philosophy where I'm making money, and he got his philosophy where he's just demanding higher taxes. Here's what Scott Beston thinks is going to happen. Cut 36. Some are going to come down in weeks. Some are going to come down in months. We just had the, in terms of affordability. We just had the...

Best month in the housing market due to affordability, due to increased supply in October. Best October in three years. Best month since February. Right. So he sees these progress, but he also sees that certain products are up. I mean, the polls are overwhelming that people think things are more expensive. While president still has an 87% approval amongst Republicans, I think he should be at 92% of approval on Republicans, especially the speed in which he's doing almost everything he thought, but he doesn't have control of prices. 77% of the country, though, say he's not spending enough time on the economy. To me, that's bad communication. Or interpretation. Because you know, when he goes over to the Middle East and comes out with these Gulf State deals, it's for our economy. When he welcomes Mohammed bin Salman here, it's for our economy. When he goes into NATO and says spend 5% is for our economy, so we don't have to. And we're we spending that? which is shy of 5%, but if you look at the size of our economy, it's so much more than everybody else's. But when he does that, that means we don't have to spend. When NATO says, we will buy the weapons from you and give them to Ukraine, that's for our economy. 36% approve of the way he's handling the economy. It started when he took over at 44%. CBS did something, and they said prices and inflation. Trump... says Trump acts, like 60% say Trump's acts like things are better than they are. 27% says he acts like things are just right. 13% said worse than they are. Okay, so the president likes to cheerlead for the economy. People think he's snowing them, but I think that's a danger. And that's why I watch the JD Vance and Scott Bessent go out of the way, go, we're not going to tell you things are better. If you think they're bad, they are bad. We're going to get them better. But the president's always going to be cheerleading and say, look at the deals I've done. By the way, I want you to see, I know it's far away, but on February 14th, I want to see in Fort Myers and history, liberty, and laughs. And I want you to know it's going to stream on Fox Nationation, but I want to see you in person. It's the biggest venue yet, 1,700 tickets, and we're selling them like crazy. Briankillme.com.