Is Putin pulling a fast one?

This show proudly sponsored by Real American Freestyle Wrestling. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian. In Kill Mead. Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the latest moments of the Brian Kilmeet Show. We got a big hour coming your way. We're going to be joined by Jen Eosterly, the former United States Director of Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Security, retired Army officer with two bronze stars. She's going to be in the studio. Brett Baer is standing by, chief political audio of Fox News.

Rarely gets pulled over for speeding, but it did happen. More on that later. The Brett Baer podcast is still obtainable. He's got a book coming out called Rescue to Rescue. His next book is called To Rescue the American Spirit, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Birth.

Of a superpower. But before we get to Brett, let's get to the big news. Number three.

So, I don't want to get ahead of any administration announcements, but we are looking at a whole host of points of leverage we can exercise over California and other states to make sure they comply with the law. Sanctuary cities are killing people because you allow these violent criminals to set up shop in your cities. That's J.D. Vance yesterday. The sanctuary scrutiny, Bondi, Pam Bondi, brings down the hammer on sanctuary cities across the country as ICE raids in the blue cities over and over again.

They're fanning out and making it harder for illegals to thrive in a place they evidently are attracted to, while an illegal turn from an illegal immigrant kills three. And Governor Ron DeSantis is incensed at Governor Newsom. Number two. This is radical rigging. Of a midterm election, radical.

But right now, we're walking down a damn different path. We're fighting fire with fire. And we're gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth. Mm-hmm. Yeah, real tough guy, Gavin Newsom, trying to read his lines like a bad actor.

Gerrymandering madness heats up as Texas gets their quorum and likely five new seats to run for in the House in Texas. As you just heard, California governor trying to match in California, throwing out performative profanity while Dems search for seats while losing members and searching for a message. I'll explain. Number One. This will not work.

Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly. Discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere. Huh. That is a little discouraging. I know it's the Foreign Minister, Foreign Secretary, and it's not Vladimir Putin.

But when you talk about security guarantees, that's really what propelled Alaska to happen. Because See Butkov came back and said, We just got security guarantees. You know, he's open to security guarantees for Ukraine. And that was one of the reasons why the president said, if they want to do this, let's just meet and start this thing off.

Next thing you know, you got a meeting on Monday with the European leaders, unprecedented. And now we're waiting on a trilateral and a massive, scripted, orchestrated walkback, it seems. for uh Russia. They said if you're going to have a Security Force in Ukraine We should be a part of it, so should China. Really?

What would be the point? Obviously, that's a non-starter. They want us to put. Fighter jets ready to go in Romania. I think we should do it.

We already have assets throughout the region. What's the difference? As long as those fighter jets are ready to go to protect Ukraine. if they want to take the keep the stolen land that they got. It's stolen.

Now they want to get land they didn't win over yet. Which I think they're debating. But now you're going to pull back the security guarantees, and you want everyone to think you sincerely want peace. You don't. But what I think we got to do, and I think the administration's smart to say, I'm not going to do anything.

Unless I hear from Vladimir Putin. I'm not going to come out and rebuke the Foreign Secretary unless I hear from Putin, because we don't know if he's just posturing. What am I getting mad at?

So the administration's been quiet. There was no press availability yesterday. That's significant.

So, um Remember. JD Vance, last night, who was very quiet and I didn't hear say a word when all the European leaders got together on Monday and Zelensky had his one-on-one with the president cut to. Ukraine wants to know that it's not going to get invaded again by Russia. It wants to know that it's got territorial integrity long into the future. The Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they've occupied, but some of which they haven't.

So that is really where the meat of the negotiation is. The Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory. Again, we finally got the details. We're working on them, but we haven't figured everything out.

I know everything's unorthodox, and I'm going to be patient, and nothing's going to go the kiss and jewel way or the George Schultz way, the traditional way, Zabig Brzezinski. I understand that, Jim Baker. That's more traditional, and nothing about President Trump is traditional, but he is the most experienced second-term president. Four years to study, four years to do it, four years to come back.

So I'm open to saying You know, your relationship with Putin? It seems to be better than almost any other. Leader ever, including all the presidents he's dealt with, from Clinton, Obama, to Bush to Biden. But here He is picking up the pace since the talk started. He's hitting with hundreds of drone strikes.

He's not aiming for the military, because military to military, he's getting his ass kicked. But when he's going after apartment buildings and hospitals, last night he injured three children.

now going for the energy sector, and he's getting very close. to hitting these NATO nations, if not directly, incidentally. If we're to believe that. Here's Posh's Uh Defense Minister, cut six. Once again, we are dealing with a provocation by the Russian Federation with a Russian drone.

Russia will never admit to this, just as it hasn't admitted to any of the eight incidents in Moldova, three incidents in Romania, three incidents in Lithuania, two incidents in Latvia, and one incident in Bulgaria involving drones.

So if you have International troops, doesn't have to be NATO troops, just happen to be NATO affiliates. If you they're in Ukraine, you gotta think in theory there's gonna be no invasion since they gave up all their nuclear weapons in the nineties. They were given guarantees they lost Crimea. Given guarantees, they lost the Donbas, or portions of the Donbas. And finally, there was a full-out invasion.

41 months ago. And that's where we're at right now.

So, the president, at one point, if he feels as though Lavrov speaks for the Russians. If he feels that way, Then he's got to come out and say, hey. Vladimir, I got three hundred billion dollars of your frozen funds. Do you want to go to Ukraine? Hey, Lavrov, do you know that if you're going to continue to say security guarantees that's a road to nowhere?

If you really believe that, Then I think we're going to hit another one of your allies with secondary sanctions. We already hit India.

So They already hit India. How about Brazil? The next one would be turkey. And the last one would be China. And if you actually want to get them to stop, China is the senior partner of that relationship.

So what are they up to? What are they doing? Retired General Four Star General Joseph Vote Votel. Cut nine. any military plans, any military operations, whether in the air or on the ground, really have to be nested within some kind of political agreement.

So it's really it's really going to be important to see how that comes out, to see how the military component of this evolves. Yeah, and we'll see what's happening. Look, I'm not going to spend the whole time talking about Russia and Ukraine, but it looks like the trilateral meeting, they said it's not going to be quick. There's a road to get there. I was hoping for this Friday.

You are hoping for this Friday. I think Budapest, Hungary makes sense. Because You have their leader who's the only one in the West, technically in the West NATO member, to go visit. Vladimir Putin since his Uh unscheduled invasion of that country.

So we'll talk about that. The other thing we're talking about is the drama in Texas. After two week delay, the Democratic senators came back to Texas, so they had a quorum, and it looks like they passed it overwhelmingly on a party line vote, over eighty votes for Republicans. They're going to redistrict. And that is good for Texas.

They're going to maximize. The the number of Republican seat? Seats.

So To do that, they needed Democrats to come back.

So Ken Paxton On the Will Kane show yesterday. says that he's still looking to get retribution for the Cowardice move of these Democrats running to Illinois, cut seventeen. We made that argument about 13 of the legislatures. Governor Abbott made it about Wu, Representative Wu from the Houston area. And we will be in front of the Texas Supreme Court.

They have some time to respond to our requests, the Democrats. And I think by September 4th, all of those filings will be in, and the Texas Supreme Court will have it in their hands. And our argument is very simple. They abandoned their office. These are 13 legislators that came out publicly and said, we're not coming in.

We're not going to be doing our job right now. We are out of the state. And so they made it very public. And we have it in writing that they were not going to show up for their job.

So we'll see. And they want to go after Beto O'Rourke too for financing their exit. We'll see what that happens. I don't really not that interested in that. The response for California, Gavin Newsom, who wants to run for president, wants to be a tough guy, throwing out crazy expletives where they don't belong.

If I was a script writer and I said, I need a governor to act incensed, if he gave me these lines the way he gave them, I'd say, take it from the top. It's terrible. Listen to this, cut 11. This is radical rigging. of a midterm election radical rigging of an election.

destroying, vandalizing. This democracy. The rule of law.

So I'm sorry. I know some people's sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, With all due respect, we're walking down a damn different path. We're fighting fire with fire, and we're going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.

Right. And again, he is an expert on fire. He's fantastic. And he's also an expert on not giving people permits to rebuild. Doesn't really seem to care.

But he's going to take on gerrymandering.

Well, crime runs rampant, taxes are high, people are leaving, industry is leaving. And his approval rating, I think, in the state is at 32 percent. When we come back, we'll see if we can track down Brett Baer. If not, we'll open up the phones and then we'll have a And we'll have Jenny Usali join us in the studio. You listen to Brian Kill Mechio.

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Well, I think that crime statistics all over our country were massively underreported because a lot of people would pick up the phone, they'd call somebody, they'd try to get help, and nobody would show up. If you look at wait times at 911 response times all across our country, but certainly in Washington, D.C., they were way too long. And that wasn't because of the D.C. police, that was because there was too much crime and too few law enforcement agents on the street to bring order and decency to the city. That is J.

Day Vance speaking at a press conference yesterday. Then he did a sit down with Laura Ingram. But more importantly, he walked through Union Station where there's paid protesters out there screaming, We don't want to crack down on crime. I mean, a bunch of guys with nose rings and women who are unemployable gathering around to harass. The Secretary of Defense, Stephen Miller, the key advisor to Trump, as well as the Vice President.

And I think they loved it. Brett Baer joins us now. Brett, that was quite a scene. Yeah, it was quite a scene. Union Station and um You know, they got protested or shouted at, but it was only a few people.

And, um, I do think they kind of liked it. They laughed at it. Stephen Miller went into full gear about. old white hippies in his words. But listen, it is happening and there is this um crackdown and they have had more than uh six hundred arrests.

Um You know, it's different obviously to see National Guard on the streets, but. A lot of people I talk to say i they welcome uh the safety part of it. And less the overtaking the DC government because, frankly, a lot of people felt that it wasn't happening, you know, it wasn't especially in in uh really bad neighborhoods.

So the conferenc uh the common reframe. On other channels, is well, the crime was going down anyway. This is performative. But there's a huge discrepancy with these numbers, and now there's an examination and investigation. Leading the charge with questions is Greg Pemberton, the DC Police Union Chairman, Cut 28.

There's two things that are going on here. One, back in May, we found out that a police commander of a police district was stripped of his police authority and suspended. The allegation was that he was going into police databases and changing felonies to misdemeanors to keep crime stats trending lower in his district. That investigation hasn't played out, but my suspicion is that he's not the only person that was doing that. My guess is that those are directives from On High, probably directing all other commanders to do that.

But what we see on a day-to-day basis, albeit anecdotal, is that our officers go to these scenes of crimes and they go to take a report for a felony offense, and inevitably some lieutenant or some captain will show up on that scene or call the officer and direct them to take a report for a lesser offense. Or they don't come up at all. I hear the average wait time is 35 minutes when you call 911. Brad, this is a credible person, and these are solid allegations. Yes, and I think you start having it adds up and then it's become systemic.

So I we'll wait and see what happens with the investigation, where it goes. But You know, uh you can say crime is going down and still have really high murders, you know, more in a year than than Baghdad.

So I think that you have to put it all in perspective. And yet, if the numbers are not coming down, it's more of a. You know, a backup. I think the question, Brian, is how long this lasts? How long does it go?

Does it go to other cities? It's you know it statutorily it's Easier in the District of Columbia because technically the US government oversees that. The other thing is, so you needed the other 30 days, you had to go back to the Senate. And ask for those thirty days and is it a simple majority? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, they can they can pass it so Congress can move on it and then It it likely will be. I just think that you guys are you guys are about a thousand cops short. Would it be great to couple this surge of security with recruiting? And you can start filling out those ranks and maybe leave a stronger force behind.

Yeah, it all becomes then a money issue and how much they're giving the DC government. I think they scaled back a billion dollars. you know, they can look at um waste fraud and abuse in the DC government too and and remanage that. But it all takes scrutiny and it takes time and it and that's what they're pledging to do.

So I want you to hear Sergei Lavrov seems to be walking back a lot of the gains that they think they got out of Alaska, and that was being open to security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for land they haven't conquered yet. Here's Lavrov, though, telling a different story, cut four. This will not work. We have already explained more than once that Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly. Discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere.

Right. And he says it's really far down the line and says that he wants China and Russia to be part of the security contingent. Your thoughts about Lavrov's. power in that government and how much should we take him for his word?

Well, I mean this is what the Russians always do. Agree to something, then they take two steps back. In the meantime, they launch massive missile and drone attacks on various cities inside Ukraine. And then we're back to square one, getting to a bylap that always seems two or three weeks away. And in the meantime, they're taking territory in Ukraine.

So, you know, experts feared that this is what it was going to be. We'll see if this changes. you know, President Trump may feel like once he gets jacked around a little bit that um he's gonna put the pinch on more significantly. And for all the talk about how Russia is a military power, they are advancing inches, number one. Number two, their economy is really, really hurting.

And you put that secondary sanction bill of Lindsey Graham, or you step up secondary sanctions on China buying Russian oil. It's a real, real hurt to that economy. I would think so, too. But so far, the Trump administration did not have press availability yesterday, and they've been quiet today. I think that's tactically smart.

Final thought? Yeah, I think that's probably why the Ukrainian president ditched That's the uh interview with me. They didn't want to say too much at this time. It's fragile. And the President held everybody in the office.

It was like Hotel California. You could get in, but you couldn't leave. And they stayed there for a long time. They talked things through. But the real next step is the bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky, and we just haven't had exactly where or exactly when that's going to happen.

We know what's going to happen tonight at 6. It's going to be special reports starring Brett Baer as himself. He doesn't even need any news stories. He could just talk for an hour and keep you glued to the screen. Brett, thanks so much.

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You've never seen wrestling like this. Learn more at realamericanfreestyle.com. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. We have never talked about the need to seize any territories.

Neither Crimea nor Donbas nor Novorossiya as territories have ever been our goal. Our goal was to protect Russian people who lived on these lands for centuries, discovered these lands and shed blood for them. If I could uh quote, I believe Some type of Adam Sandler movie. We're all dumber having heard that. Can you imagine this?

Russia saying that our goal has never been to control Ukrainian land. That's all they've been doing is try to control the entire country, and they're not there to save Russian people. I don't know who he's talking to, but Sergei Lavrov continues to talk, and he's not making the peace process any easier. Joining us now is Jen Easterly, former United States Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, retired army officer with two bronze stars. Jen, welcome back.

Great to be here. Welcome, I should say. Yeah, great to be here. First off, as we look at this conflict right now, as we're trying to bring it to an end, When you were trying to analyze What the Russian motives is. How much do you listen to the Foreign Secretary who's been there for decades?

Yeah. So. In my in what I've been doing was very focused on Russia as a cyber threat.

So, as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, we looked hard at what Russia was doing in terms of its cyber capabilities, specifically in Ukraine, and then against our own networks, federal networks. You remember SolarWinds, you remember some of the attacks around federal networks. But I was in Kyiv last year working with Ukrainian cyber defenders and those who are trying to shore up their critical infrastructure. And quite frankly, you could see the brutality and the vicious attacks, both kinetic and non-kinetic.

So, in terms of who to trust in the Russian government to include their foreign secretary, I'm not sure I would put any trust in them. How capable are they in the cyber world? Very capable. Very capable. You know, I put China at the top.

China is really the pacing threat. But Russia has shown a real capability, particularly to go after Ukraine infrastructure and a capability. To go after our own infrastructure. The other thing, Brian, is Russia is a safe haven for a lot of these criminal groups, right? These gangs that hang out in Eastern Europe.

And that's big business. It's a multi-trillion dollar business, $10.5 trillion in cybercrime damages. If cybercrime was a country, it would be behind GDP in the U.S. and China. And a lot of that is devastating U.S.

businesses, large and small, these ransomware attacks, hospitals, schools.

So we got to look at Russia as giving a safe haven to these gangs, but also in terms of their capability to come after us and after Ukraine.

So, what about North Korea? Yeah, very serious threat as well. North Korea, and this is underreported, but really fascinating. What they've been doing is putting Fake IT workers and getting them hired into Fortune 500 companies using stolen identities. And they're collecting money and then shuttling it back to Pyongyang.

Actually, FBI just rolled up a server farm that basically was helping to support these North Korean IT workers. It's been a really big deal.

So great on the FBI, but we need to do more of these actions to impose costs, including sanctions.

So the one thing that people talk about is: well, the Russians never attacked a NATO nation, but they have through cyber attacks. Oh, absolutely. All over the Baltics. Absolutely. Didn't they just try to punish Estonia for moving a statue with a cyber attack?

Yeah, that was big in 2007, and they've done a lot since then.

So there's a bunch of reasons to be concerned about Russia. I mean, as you've said yourself, this is bigger than Ukraine. This is about pushing back on authoritarian aggression. This is about supporting democracy. But really, all of this is connected at the end of the day.

The defense of Ukraine against Russia is really the Deterrence of China against Taiwan.

So there's a lot of signaling going on here. And that's why it's so important that the president gets this deal. And I was very encouraged by what I saw in the beginning of the week with the meeting with President Zelensky and the rest of the European leaders. Look, America is best when it's showing leadership and strength, and that matters. And history shows that with a strong America and strong allies, we will be safer and more secure.

Well, NATO's got the message. They no longer can sit there and say and think that Russia is not a threat. They have the message. And adding those two countries has been great. They lost Syria because of it.

Now we have 5% of GDP. We hope, in theory, at least 2% or 3% are going to go to these NATO nations.

So in that way, Russia has failed. Because they alerted their enemies the subtle way they took portions of Georgia and kept it, they took p Crimea and kept it, parts of the Donbass and kept it.

Now the invasion has alerted everyone.

So it's no longer Trump sitting there saying, let's get rid of Nordstrom 2 and them saying, why? Why do that? It's good to have relations with Russia.

Now everybody knows we can't do that. Yeah, yeah.

So it's going to be a tough road ahead. I mean, this is a hard deal to get a trilateral, to get a ceasefire. You saw the vicious attacks overnight, a lot of civilian casualties. I think they went after a U.S.-Singaporean business in the West. Look, at the end of the day, this is going to be tough negotiations, but it's important to have that united front with the president, with European leaders, and with President Zelensky.

Jen, what do you think the Russian economy is like right now? I don't think it's pretty good. How vulnerable? Yeah. I mean, we hear the double-digit inflation.

We hear the value of the ruble. We understand trade is next to zero. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think they are vulnerable. I think the sanctions hurt.

I think we need to continue to use economic leverage against them to make sure that we can find an end to this war. And so that is a pressure point that's important, keeping them isolated economically, but talking with them to get to a point where we can actually come to an agreement. In the 2022 bombing of the Nordstrom 2 pipeline, I've loved it personally. I don't think we should have, Merkel should have ever cut the deal with the former Chancellor of Germany, has friends with Vladimir Putin. They cut this deal.

They bypass Ukraine and have natural gas flowing right to, it's like a crackpipe, right to Germany.

So the president said, get rid of Nordstrom 2. And they said, no. What about Nordstrom 1? No, we're leaving that.

Well, then it blew up.

So I think that worked to the West's advantage. But who are we finding out was behind that? Yeah, it I don't know the answer to that. I think all of your questions kind of go back to the point that, look, Russia is an authoritarian nation. They are the aggressor.

That's why we need to work with our allies, work with our partners to get to a deal to help Ukraine actually retain territorial integrity and to protect its people and its civilians. This war needs to end. Um true. And by the way, they just said a Ukrainian man has been arrested in Italy suspicion of doing that. I would give him a medal personally.

But that's me.

So for you personally, you've been through a lot lately. You're at West Point, you're teaching a class, you got this key position, and because in my view, I'm sure you're not going to confirm it, Laura Loomer, who's got way I don't know why she has any influence decides that you're too much of a Joe Biden person to have this key position. What was the position, and how did you find out that you were no longer there? Yeah, so just first off, unfortunate. I think it was a hastily made decision based on inaccurate information.

You know, for me, it's not like how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. You got to be resilient, and that's a message to the cadets. But this was the distinguished chair of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. It was not a federal government position, it was an endowed fellowship to teach a national security seminar and to work with cadets. Look, you know, his background, I spent 25 years in uniform, retired lieutenant colonel.

I went to West Point for four years, two and a half years. I taught economics there. Look, West Point's a special place. You wrote about this with the Culper Spy Ring, right? West Point strategically critical for its geography, but strategically critical for training and inspiring and educating the next generation of warfighters to include cyber warriors to be leaders of character focused on duty.

Honor and country. And that's what I spent my entire career doing in a nonpartisan, non-political way: combat tours, battalion commander. And to be clear, I have never criticized the president or any commander-in-chief, right? The president, as an American, we want the president to be successful. His success is America's success.

And all I've ever wanted to do is be a patriot, not a partisan.

So at the end of the day, I think this was an unfortunate decision that was made based on inaccurate information. But I will find other ways to lead and mentor. I mean, the private contracts that you can make with your unique expertise in an area in which we can't get enough expertise in, that's cybersecurity, is going to be great for you personally in your career, but it's probably bad for the country that you're not in this spot. And especially when you didn't have a chance to plead your case, how did you find out you were no longer there? Yeah, I was called by the superintendent who was directed, I believe, by the Secretary of the Army, and it was a legal order, obviously.

So, you know, and I don't know Secretary Driscoll. I've actually heard very positive things about him, but I don't know him. But your point is a really good one because we're in such a unique moment in history. When I was a cadet, I saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I was an instructor there, it was the fall of the Twin Towers.

Now we're at this incredible moment in history, right? And the class that I was going to teach was called Warrior X. It was all about how young leaders deal with this era of technological innovation and disruption, right? Autonomy, cyber, drones, powerful AI. And if you saw the AI action plan that the White House released, which I thought was really good, it talks specifically about defense leaders being able to leverage AI to fight and win the nation's wars.

And the great irony is, I was going to ask Secretary Driscoll and other leaders of the current administration to come in as guest lecturers. Because the cadets need to understand how our political leaders, how our policy leaders are grappling with these issues.

So, look, at the end of the day, unfortunate, didn't get the plead the case. I understand that these decisions get made, but I'll figure out a way to move forward. Do we just correct the record? Laura Loomer, who I've never met, but I find it really disconcerting that she has any influence with the president. She's just a lightly regarded pundit.

She says that you were part of the disinformation committee that never got off the ground with Nina Jankowicz, who famously sang that song. Were you part of that under Joe Biden? I had nothing to do with Nina Jankowicz. I've never met Nina Jankowicz. I've never worked with Nina Jankowicz.

I had nothing to do with the Disinformation Governance Board. Look, this comes from, I was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, right? This was the agency that in 2020 declared the contentious presidential election that it was a secure election. I didn't join CISA until 2021. Our job was to work with secretaries of state all across the country.

In fact, I had fantastic relationships with Republican secretaries of state to make sure they had what they needed to defend their election infrastructure. And Brian, I was very proud to be the person that certified the 2024 presidential election as safe and secure and free and fair.

So at the end of the day, there was no, the accusations are around censorship. CISA never censored any. Anything at any time. And to be honest, if somebody wore the uniform and fought in combat, as did Secretary Hegseth, as did Secretary Driscoll, as did the Vice President, I've always said, I may disagree with what you're saying, but I will fight for your right to say it. Yeah.

So I just think you got a raw deal. A country would have been better off if you were there. And especially when you find out that somebody doesn't know you and you didn't have a chance to plead your case and explain your background, a lot of times the president goes back and corrects things. Hopefully, Colonel, he'll correct this. Can I tap into your expertise for a second?

Matt, please. On AI. I was seeing this story last week that a group of American engineers went over to China and they were blown away. And they say we might have lost this AI race already on energy. They have built up their energy to provide for AI, the AI energy that's necessary.

And we're in the process of doing that. How real is the threat of not having the energy to push AI forward at the pace necessary? Yeah, so the energy piece of this is incredibly important. But if I can just step back on the China piece first, because I think it's important to see the big picture, because China, from a threat perspective, in particular right now, what they're doing is something the American people have to be aware of. We have seen China going after our telecommunication systems to spy and to steal our data.

But the most serious threat that I've seen in my time as a cyber and intelligence person is China attempting actually hackers from the People's Liberation Army hacking into our most sensitive critical infrastructure. I'm talking water, power, transportation, communication, and not to spy, not to steal our data, but to be able to launch disruptive attacks in the event of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

So we're talking mass disruption, everything. You're nestled in there right now. Absolutely. We found them. We eradicated them.

But we thought what we found was the tip of the iceberg. And so China is actively holding our critical infrastructure at risk so that they can incite societal panic and deter our ability to marshal military might and citizen will.

So we need that is a right now problem. And frankly, it's why I welcome the fact that the administration has talked about being more aggressive in offensive cyber capabilities. I stood up the Army's first cyber battalion. I helped stand up U.S. Cyber Command.

We have vast offensive cyber capabilities, and we do need to use them more effectively to be able to hold our adversaries at risk and to be able to impose costs.

So I think it's just important to set the scene in terms of China as a cyber power. Why was Michael Walt using the Signal app? Because our communication's been compromised, correct? Yeah, look, we actually, when I was the director of CISA, because of the major compromise against our telecommunications, We gave recommendations to use Signal.

Now, obviously, you know, to be judicious about what information went on there, but that was part of our guidance, right? Because you had to be concerned about these intrusions into our telecommunications.

So that is a very serious issue.

Now, on the AI side, you know, I do worry a lot about threats. Every bit of new technology, it's like the old saying goes, you invent the plane, you invent the plane crash, you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. But that's why American leadership is so important. And this goes back to the AI action plan, right? Pro-innovation, pro-competitive globally with our adversaries like China, but also it talked about cybersecurity, critical infrastructure security, secure by design systems, dealing with the Cambio threat.

So I think if we actually implement that plan, we can stay ahead of our adversaries. We can tap into this power. We can make use of the energy so that we can stay ahead of China, but also we can mitigate those risks. Wow. Lieutenant Colonel Easterly, hopefully this is just one of many appearances, especially on the network.

Thanks for everything you've done. And hopefully the administration will be smart enough to bring you back, if you're willing. Lieutenant General, Lieutenant Colonel Jen Easterly, thank you very much. Thanks so much, Brian. Great to be with you.

Back in a moment. Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmead.

I'm Janistine. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcast.com. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show.

And if nothing else, we've called out the absurdity of the normalization. of Donald Trump. I mean, you can't make it. I mean, when Fox is sitting there, oh, so, so. concerned about these tweets and all caps.

They've missed the entire point, haven't they? What word? pushing back on what we're doing. The fact that Uh we're You know, people are paying a little bit more attention. Maybe they should be able to what the President of the United States of America is modeling every single day.

That is so great that Governor Gavin Newsom. is obsessed with Fox. And by the way, whether he's suing or not, I don't know if that was just a lark, but suing because. Instead of him showing his own personality and showing America what kind of leader he be and what he's been, because outside California, we fear nothing but bad things because we look at the results. Even though he looks apart.

He's mocking Trump, but Trump's already won twice, right? He thinks he won three times. And whatever you do, you're not going to land on Trump.

So you want to mock Trump. He doesn't bother him. They're still implementing these operations. He's still moving ahead with his agenda. And you're using your time.

And I agree. I'm looking. He is gaining followers. But is he gaining supporters? People say, well, that's interesting.

He's mocking Trump's tone. Trump's doing a lot. And I think people are going to look back at his administration and say, this is how you lead a country. might not agree with everything he's doing. But man, he told you exactly what he wants to do, and he has the people that know what he wants and are looking to do it.

So great, though, to meet Lieutenant Colonel Jen Easterly as well as Brett Baer this hour. Keep it here, Brian Kennings. From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone.

Brian Kilmead here. Thanks so much for listening. It's going to be a big hour as we follow all the breaking news leading up to Labor Day closing out the summer. Senator Eric Schmidt's going to be with us from Missouri. Judiciary and Armed Services Committees keep him busy, vice chair of the Joint Economics Committee, but also the author of a brand new book, The Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court.

And one of the big focuses now, legally, is to stop sanctuary cities. I think that behind closed doors, most Democrats have to know it's bad for the country. It's certainly not where the country is anymore. But they don't know how to get out of their own way. But you'll look at this governor, the mayor of uh Boston.

Mayor of Baltimore embarrassing himself. I thought the DC mayor is trying to navigate two things, the President as well as her own party. You are the terrible mayor of Chicago, all letting illegal immigrants run wild. Taxpayers are funding. Do you realize in California, taxpayers fund the college education?

Of illegal immigrants? as well as their health insurance. It's crazy. Let's get to the big three. Number three.

So, I don't want to get ahead of any administration announcements, but we are looking at a whole host of points of leverage we can exercise over California and other states to make sure they comply with the law. Sanctuary cities are killing people because you allow these violent criminals to set up shop in your cities. That is so true, and that is the vice president. Sanctuary scrutiny. Bondi brings down the hammer on sanctuary cities as ICE raids the blue cities, grabbing illegals at every turn.

While an illegal turn from an illegal from India kills three, and Governor Ron DeSantis is incensed. Number two. This is radical rigging. Of a midterm election, radical. But right now, we're walking down a damn different path.

We're fighting fire with fire. I want to punch these sons a bitch in the mouth. Is he the phoniest guy you've ever heard in your life? Gerrymandering madness heats up as Texas gets a quorum and likely five new seats in the House as Newsom tries to match in California, throwing out performative profanity while Dems search for seats while losing members at a dizzying rate, hard time raising money, searching for a message. Number Wrong.

This will not work. Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly. Discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere. That's Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister. Vladimir Putin pulling a fast one, I think, as his minions begin to walk back what was Greon in Alaska.

Meanwhile, the trilateral. Looks like it's going to be put off. For now, it might be time for 47 to turn the screws. Let's bring in the senior fellow at the Middle East programs, the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, and leads the initiative on counterterrorism project designed to examine the future of global terrorism threats and counter threats efforts. He's currently the Vice President of Transformation at Infor.

Welcome back, Alex Plistis. Alex, welcome. Great to see you. You two, thanks for having me. Alex, first off.

Uh on the negotiations The foreign minister comes out Labrov, who's been there for a hundred years, and basically says I'm not for this international security guarantee. And if there is going to be one, I think China and Russia should be part of it, which is farcical. What do you make of the mixed message we're getting? I think it's still negotiation posturing. I mean, some of it is messaging publicly.

I saw some reporting yesterday that the White House is largely ignoring this until they hear something from Putin because a lot of these other folks have no power. And it's propaganda for the base, you know, as you're listening to what they're saying. But to your point, you know, asking the Chinese or the Russians to be a security guarantor is insane. It's not going to work. And now the Russians, at least through Lavrov, are saying they wouldn't accept the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine as a security guarantee.

So herein lies the problem. That area in northeastern Ukraine, the Donbass, and specifically half of Donetsk province, that they have not been able to take since 2014 is where Ukraine has substantial defensive lines that have essentially prevented the Russians from making a run on Kiev. Because once you get past those defenses, it's open flat farmland basically until you get to Kiev.

So you want the Ukrainians to withdraw, take down all of their defenses that have prevented you from making a run on the capital, and then the security guarantee that's supposed to prevent you from doing that in return for the land that you want back, you also don't want to accept.

So they're trying. To pull the levers of power in their favor, which is simply not going to work. And they're basically setting up a scenario to invade the country. And they are getting close and really testing the edges of NATO. The neighboring countries.

Listen to the Polish pro defense minister yesterday cut six. Once again, we are dealing with a provocation by the Russian Federation with a Russian drone. Russia will never admit to this, just as it hasn't admitted to any of the eight incidents in Moldova, three incidents in Romania, three incidents in Lithuania, two incidents in Latvia, and one incident in Bulgaria involving drones.

So I mean, they're on the edge. They're pushing the envelope and they're not showing any signs that they want to do a deal and want some economic recovery dollars or to revitalize their economy. I mean, that's the problem. I think you're right. It's a question of the intentions.

Is he stalling for time, or is he actually seeking to make a peace deal here? Because at the end of the day, the only thing the Russians are going to stop for is if the cost calculus changes.

So if the remaining cost for gaining more territory exceeds what Putin wants to spend for what he gets in return, he's going to say, hey, it's not worth it. I walk away. But so far, there hasn't been a sufficient penalty, and he's willing to sacrifice a million Russian service members so far, according to public estimates that have been released. And if you look at the country's population, it's only 140 million people. That's one in every 140 people in Russia has died in Ukraine in the last couple of years.

That is besides the sacrifice that this guy has been willing to make to try to get land grab.

So if he's willing to do that, what's he willing to do in return to continue this fight? By the way, Alex Pleetsis, our guest, he's here as cyber expert, military expert, and helping us out to make heads or tails of what's happening. Alex, from your estimation, I think what Trump says is: yeah, I have these, there's going to be ramifications, but it's not going to help me negotiate to make it public. Because these guys got this pride. And all these leaders have this pride.

If they feel as though they're not being respected, even though they're not worthy of respect in many cases, it's not going to help. But behind the scenes, he could say, listen, there's going to be hell to pay if you walk away or make me look bad. And it's going to be unfreezing the $300 billion and giving it to Ukraine. It's going to be secondary sanctions on China, Turkey, Brazil that's going to be coming. There's other economic things we could be doing.

So, do you think that's been said behind the scenes, or do you think it's just assumed? That there'll be a price to pay if Russia starts walking back what they've already agreed to. I think there's been some discussions about repercussions that would happen. I don't know that it's gotten to outright threats, and then some of it's leaked into the public space on purpose that they're made aware without them having to have that conversation sort of face to face. What we're hearing is a couple of things.

So I spoke to Ukrainian officials right before the meeting the other day and said, hey, what are we not seeing or picking up on? They said, I don't know if you noticed, but for the last six months, the United States had asked us to withhold attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure while they were trying to push them for negotiations. The week before the attacks, that was lifted, and there was a significant strike against one of their oil and gas facilities.

So the Ukrainians basically said, hey, this is foreshadowing. If they want to push the envelope and continue this, that's going to open up attacks on the oil and gas sector. And the President's also threatened secondary sanctions on their economy to help drive it into the ground.

So the question is, is that sufficient for Putin to get him to stop, again, changing that cost calculus? That's what everybody's still waiting on right now. What is the state of the economy? I mean, what did you think the CIA is telling the President?

Well, I think what was really telling was actually kind of funny. Putin's there, you know, trying to engage in these good faith discussions when he's in Alaska, et cetera, allegedly in public. Then he gets up there and he's talking and said, Well, and the economy is growing at 20%. If you watch the president's face, President Trump smiled when he said that because he knew he was totally full of crap. The numbers are well below that.

So the economy is definitely in a bit of trouble there. But let's not forget, and this is the problem when we're like, we don't want to be starting wars all over the place and interventionalism and everything else. Got that. Nobody's advocating for those types of activities. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're not going to use military force, you have what's called the dime paradigm: diplomatic information, military, and economic, right?

Levers of power to pull on. On the diplomatic and economic side, you have the sanctions, right? But we've had sanctions against Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Some of these 40, 50 years, and there's an international sanctions-busting regime that's effectively served as a backdoor for currency movement and trading of goods, et cetera, that ghost fleets for Russian oil and gas that are moving around the world, that are being purchased in India and Japan. And other places, right? And it's problematic. And then we've also got Russian gas still and oil being purchased in Europe.

So their economy is still having some lifelines, and that's got to be turned off. But the problem is, for many years, the theory was: well, if there's economic interdependence between countries, they're not going to go to war if they depend on each other for an economy. And that's what the Ukrainians largely believe, too. There's not going to be a war. The Russians couldn't be that dumb.

Our economies are so intertwined. The culture, everything else. Sure enough, they were wrong. And the Europeans, it's the same thing here. They've got to quit this dependency on the Russians.

And I think the President was right. I didn't even know what Nordstrom was one or two when the President took over the first time. And he said, guys, what are you doing with Nordstrom two?

Well, we're doing it anyway. And then when Biden, he said, no, you're not. And then Biden comes in and says, well, it's almost done. Just let him finish it.

Next thing you know, you got an invasion. Then thankfully they exploded one and two, so it's not there. And we'll be great providers. Of great natural gas. You build the terminals, we have the natural gas.

So I think it works. But I want you to hear some farcical things that are coming out of Sergei Glavrov. Listen to this, cut four. This will not work. We have already explained more than once that Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly.

Discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere. We have never talked about the need to seize any territories. Neither Crimea nor Donbas nor Novorossiya as territories have ever been our goal. Our goal was to protect Russian people who lived on these lands for centuries, discovered these lands and shed blood for them. I mean, do you believe this guy?

I mean, does he who is li who believes any of this? I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, nobody with any common sense would believe this to start with, right? I mean, but the problem is they've got some pretty decent propaganda that's out there.

So there are folks who will say, hey, you know, there's actually this threat. Let me give it to you straight. I was on the ground in January and February of 2014 in Kyiv, in Lviv. The square was on fire, the Maidan, the protests that everybody remembers. And so I saw all the blaring Russian state propaganda.

There's these anti-Russian Ukrainian fascists running around targeting ethnic Russian people. This was all nonsense. I'm literally in Lviv, strolling, milling about in chocolate shops. It's supposed to be the center of this activity. It's not happening.

I'm in Kiev. None of this violence or activity is actually taking place. This was actually a pretext for the invasion that was to come, right? And if we recall at that time, Russian soldiers came across the border and invaded, right? They took over, they annexed Crimea.

They went to these areas. They took off their patches. And so there was no identifying marks on there. And Putin pretended like they weren't there.

Now, fast forward a decade later, they've admitted that they've taken and held the territory. They held these sham referendums where they had soldiers going house to house by force, collecting ballots and votes, trying to make it look like this was a legitimate security threat to the people who were there. This has gone on for a long time. What I got from the Ukrainians when I was there in 1914, I said, look, what is going on and why is this happening? They said, look, we're at the midst of signing off on an economic agreement with the Europeans.

That would also come with the adoption of NATO military policy. And one of the heads of the security services, the deputy that I was meeting with at the time, said, Hey, I was in Moscow last summer visiting classmates of mine I went through the spy academy with when it was still the Soviet Union back in the KGB days. And they said, look, this is not going to work for us with you signing off on this. I said, yeah, okay, whatever. We're an independent country.

We don't need to listen. You're not going to tell us what to do in our own country. And then all of a sudden, the government flipped and they went from supporting a pro-European position for an economic agreement because the people wanted integration with Europe. And the Russians said, absolutely not. What was really at risk for them and what What drove them insane is that in Crimea, which they occupied since 2014, is a naval base at Sevastopol.

So, Sevastopol is home to the Russian Black Fleet, which is the largest and the pride of the Russian Navy. If you go through the Bosphorus down and into the Mediterranean, that is one of the bases that they use to counter NATO forces in the Mediterranean because it's a warm-water port in the winter. It's the same reason the Russians want the port in Latakia and why they were supporting and propping up Assad. They could give a damn about the Syrian people or the Ukrainians, whatever else. These are strategic moves designed to give the Russians the ability to counter NATO in the Mediterranean because their main concern, they keep saying, is NATO this, NATO that.

So they create these fictitious situations on the ground. I mean, it was actually brilliant, if you think about it, right? I'll try to be quick and I'll end it there. The Russians came in, created this non-existent threat in the media. Again, I was there and saw it.

It didn't exist. It wasn't real. They then have the security services prop up an opposition government with some folks who were there, who then turn around and invite the Russian services, the military, to come in and provide security against a non-existent threat. The troops then show up with no patches on, take the territory, annex Crimea. And there was some fighting in the Donbass, and then that continued afterwards.

But by and large, the entire battle was won in the information space. The troops were window dressing that came in on the back end afterwards. They have been masterful at taking advantage of the information space, and we look like amateur hour clowns in response to that. And that's from somebody who used to be responsible for this, the Pentagon. Wow, that was fantastic.

I mean, you were there, you saw the advent. It just bothers me so much when I hear people buying some of the things that you're saying. And they say, well, you know, Russia, they were feeling threatened by NATO and Ukraine yeah, threatened by NATO. NATO's a defensive organization. They don't attack anybody.

Exactly. And that's the funny part. You said it's a defensive organization. The question that never gets asked is. Why are Russia's neighbors seeking to join a defensive alliance?

If this is a guy promoting peace, democracy, and if nothing else, economic prosperity and inclusion with their neighbors, they'd be flocking to him. Instead, they're looking to join a defensive alliance with people who've been taken advantage. Because when you go from Chechnya, Georgia in 2008, when they went in there in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Ukraine, the list goes on and on. He goes in, he takes what he wants, uses military force, and it's always the same Soviet-era justification of protecting against a non-existent threat. It's a load of crap.

Wow, Alex Pleetsis, thanks so much, Alex. Always great. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. And then when we get closer to the trilateral, we'll have you back for sure.

Eric Schmidt at the bottom of the hour, and more of this and so much more, along with the gerrymandering madness in a moment.

Okay. You're with Brian Kilmeade. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead.

So President Trump calls you a communist. You call yourself a Democratic Socialist.

Some of your volunteers in your campaign say that the distinction doesn't really matter. Does it matter? Are there elements of communism in your platform? The elements of my platform are all about affordability, and I am a democratic socialist. And when New Yorkers ask me what it means, I take them to the words of Dr.

Martin Luther King, who said, call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country. Oh my goodness, is that the only line he has? Here's a question. If you're asked, are you a communist?

I would start with no. And I wouldn't segue to I'm a democratic socialist and then quote a black leader. That's all he does. And listen, this is why they're keeping him away from people. And that was our own Nate Foy, who's too tall to ignore.

At 6'7, he basically leaned over, and the guy had no chance. He would have to literally walk away, which would have made more news. Here's more from Mdami and what he stands for. He's got a 20-point lead, does the communist in New York. Cut 35.

You've called for a $30 minimum wage. What would your response be to hotel owners who say that this would increase operational cost and lead to more layoffs like the ones that you're rallying against today? You know, we see the fact that this is not About Being able to make ends meet for this hotel. This is about greed. We have seen time and again this union stand up for its members so that they can actually afford to live on that same wage.

I mean, I've heard from so many members who. They are still on the precipice of being priced out of the city that they call home. And yet, we have a hotel where you'd be spending $1,300.

So, this guy who's 33 years old, never ran a business as a failed rapper. And a professional student who has multiple homes in different countries and three continents, he says, I know how to run a hotel business. Hotel businesses can afford to pay thirty dollars an hour. Has he ever looked at a ledger? Has he ever Um has he has he ever Written a check?

Has he ever had an employee?

So, if you're all going to double the minimum wage and tell everybody you're making $30, you're going to make that boss hold on to these people? That's not why you get leases out on buildings, take great risk in refurbishing, go ahead and get loans to in order to convince people that you're a good bet. And then someone like Zohre Mendani, 33-year-old, unaccomplished legislator, is going to come along and tell you what your labor costs should be. That you're making too much money. I mean, New York, you gotta be kidding me.

Didn't you already experience the worst mayor ever? A lazy socialist with a fake name called De Blasio? And now you're gonna do it again? The only difference is. You thought that after Bloomberg and Giuliani, New York was unbreakable.

He showed you can break it. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead.

A lot of these comments, a lot of this rhetoric from the left. Is really putting my officers and agents in harm way. And that's what I'm mostly afraid of. Because we can go ahead and take custody of a criminal legal alien convicted of some pretty heinous crimes inside a police station or inside a jail. But no, we have to go back into the community, into their environment and put not only the public at risk, but put my officers and agents at risk.

That is the acting ICE director, man, is he busy, Todd Lyons, and talking about the dangers of these sanctuary cities. One of the first things President Trump did in 2017 when he took over.

Well, say we're gonna get rid of these sanctuary cities.

So the all the blue cities took him to court and they prevailed. I don't know how it actually ended up with the distraction of the Russia ruse.

So they're going back now, and Pan Bondi now putting pressure on all these cities to change their ways. How do you do it and how do you win? That's all part of the reason why my next guest wrote the book, The Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court. He does, and he did. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri joins us now.

Senator, welcome. Good to be with you, Brian.

So, Todd Lyons is frustrated with the Sanctuary City status. Everybody I know, and I imagine some Democrats. Are frustrated, and I know every ICE agent is. Is there a way to win in court? That you know of that they might be more successful that they didn't do back in 2017?

Well, I think, yeah, these sanctuary cities Well, one avenue, one lever certainly is they ought to lose all federal funding. for almost everything if you're then they sue you back for it But that's what happened last time and they sued him and they won in court. Right. But I think you can probably be a little bit more targeted as it relates to maybe law en there's a lot of grants that are related to law enforcement. There's probably some things that are much more targeted that will withstand legal scrutiny.

And I think, again, one of the reasons why I wrote the book, Brian, is that I just think conservatives, we have to be tough. We have to be smart. We've got to be willing to do battle in the courtroom too. And I think on the other side of it, we can be. Be successful.

When I was attorney general of Missouri, the job I had before I was in the Senate. It was really kind of in that dark period. We've talked about it with you about some of these lawsuits, but President Trump was out of power. The left was really on the march. This was lockdowns, compulsory COVID shots, open borders, DEI struggle sessions, ESG, and a censorship enterprise that was out there that we uncovered that was vast, expansive, and really frightening.

And so we took the Biden administration to court on the vaccine mandate. We won. We took the Biden administration on the student-loan debt forgiveness case to the Supreme Court. We won. We uncovered the vast censorship enterprise of Missouri versus Biden.

And I think the lessons from these, and we can talk about what it's like to take the deposition of Fauci and Elvis Chan. You can read about it in the book, Last Line of Defense. But the lesson is: if you got the courage and you're willing to fight back, we can win. And this is really kind of a playbook for the future.

So, is it true that LA District Court's two-thirds are Democratic appointees? I don't know if that's the number now. President Trump had over 200 appointees, but I think what you're seeing, and he's going to have more, the first four in Missouri that are coming up. But a lot of these district court decisions, they do make some news. Like, think of what Boseberg did initially.

He took a case he shouldn't have. He wasn't even the assignment judge that night.

Somehow he's on vacation. He gets the case. But as they've made their way through the appellate courts and ultimately Supreme Court, President Trump's team, by the way, John Sauer, who was my solicitor general, is now the Solicitor General of the United States. They've been largely successful on these fronts. First of all, personnel and programming, they have a right to fire people.

That's been affirmed by the court. They've got a right to change this ridiculous stuff USAID was doing, like Guatemalan sex changes. They've been vindicated in court. And specifically on immigration issues, I think they've been vindicated. Think about there was a case yesterday that came down from an appellate court on temporary protective status.

It was a way for Biden to allow all these people at the last minute to stay longer than they should have. We're talking about millions of people. And the Trump administration said, you know what, it's time to go. And the courts have upheld that. They've upheld these deportations to countries of not their actual origin.

So I think, by and large, President Trump's agenda is being upheld in the court. It just has to get past these initial district court decisions sometimes that are frustrating. Right, it is. And would you say to keep fighting it all the way up the ladder? And you feel good that the Supreme Court is providing some legitimate justice.

I want to just finish up on the sanctuary story because it resulted in death again. We watched the illegal turn by this legal immigrant here, came over in 2018, somehow got a commercial license to drive an 18-wheeler. He doesn't know. English, trying to understand English. He makes a crazy three-point turn and he kills three people.

And he's trying to spend the rest of his life in jail, but he has gotten his licenses from California and from Washington State. Governor Ron DeSantis, these three people were from Florida. He's incensed, and I can understand it. And now he sent his lieutenant governor to go get this guy out so he can sit in a Florida prison. Cut 22.

I said initially the company needs to be held accountable, and we've been working with the federal government, and they are pulling that company's license to do business because you cannot employ somebody who cannot read the road signs. Why is he spending all this time, you know, trying to be fresh with President Trump? Why doesn't he do his job and protect the people? And as much as we somehow poke fun at California oftentimes because of all the problems that the liberal policies have allowed, that is spilling over into the rest of the country. And Florida is a tragic example with three of our fellow citizens who are dead because of his sanctuary policy.

And that's why people say, well, just move to Missouri. You know, go to Texas if you don't like the rules.

Well, it bleeds everywhere. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, every state, plus, every state's a border state when it comes to this, which is why the mass migration we saw of the Biden administration needs to be met with mass deportations. And I think, again, by and large, it won't happen fast enough, that's for sure. But you already have 1.4 million people who are here illegally or gone in the first seven months.

That's a good start. And I think that's what the commitment is. And again, I just think, you know, we took on the reason why the last line of defense, how to beat the left in court, you can go to Amazon right now, Brian, and go get it. It outlines all these battles. The border issue was a big issue.

We held the Biden administration at bay for a little while, but ultimately they were successful. And remember, the Democrats were saying you need a bunch of new laws to deal with immigration. Turns out we just needed a new president. And so now we have a president that has absolutely sealed the border and is moving forward with deportations. And the courts are upholding those.

And one decision I didn't mention, Brian, it probably should, a big win, was the Supreme Court put it into these universal or nationwide injunctions. That was a real problem because then that one district court judge in New Mexico or whatever could affect foreign policy. That's insane. And the courts have said, the Supreme Court said you can't do that anymore. That's a big win, too.

Well, can I tap into your legal knowledge again? And the President of the United States put a $50 million bounty on the head of Maduro because of the drug trafficking. And he's telling the cartels, we're now declaring you terrorists so we can take shots at them. And listen, I'm anti-cartel. Scheinbaum, Mexico says, hey, you can't just do that in our country.

And in Venezuela, we got destroyers. off the shore now, off the shore of Venezuela. What are we legally allowed to do that's domestic law and international law?

Well, look, if the president think of the Alien Enemies Act, this was sort of an issue there. If he declares sort of an invasion, right, like this is effectively an invasion of our country, he has core Article II powers that can be used. And so declaring the cartels a terrorist organization gives him cover to go do some of those things. I think it's Um, he so he could. That's a legal answer.

But I think a lot of this too is leverage. What President Trump's very good at is using every lever of power that he has to get to a result. You look at what's happening on trade policy, you look at what's happening with Russia-Ukraine. I think this is it should wake up the Mexican president and other folks who've let this drug trade happen. And I was down at the border when I was attorney general, Brian.

The economic value of the human trafficking is $100 million a week. That's what it was. It's not anymore. But the cartels, they want to make money. They got rich under Biden, so they're going to look for new ways to do it.

You're also seeing now, since the southern border is effectively secure, the Coast Guard is super busy now, too, right? Because they're getting on the open seas.

So we know that we got to stop them. And I think President Trump's using every lever of power he can. And we're talking to Senator Eric Schmidt. His new book is now out called Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court. I want to talk about what you've done to take on the social media giants who are being censored by push to censor conservatives and others.

That Joe Biden didn't want, didn't like. And even when Trump was there, he was being censored as he was president. We know that Elon Musk did so much on X when he bought it. What did you do?

So before Elon Musk bought Twitter and before the Twitter files and before these congressional investigations when I was AG, I talk about it in the book, Last Line of Defense, you can get on Amazon, is we filed the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit, Brian. This was before any of that happened. We saw Saki at the podium talking about flagging things. We saw the disinformation governance boards. We decided to file a lawsuit.

We made a decision to get discovery first. And what we found was shocking. It was thousands of pages of emails and texts. through secret portals between high-ranking government officials, senior executives at the biggest companies in the history of the world, these big tech giants, to silence conservatives. We took Anthony Fauci's deposition.

We talk about it in the book. We took Elvis Chan's deposition. We talk about it in the book. He was the FBI agent in the Northern District of California that was pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story. And the FBI had it.

They knew it was real. They were telling them, this is coming. This is coming. It's from, it's a Russian hack and leak operation. You got to censor it.

So they really used the threat of investigations, losing Section 230 protections to get them to censor. Speech they didn't want. You cannot do that in this country. The First Amendment protects that. The government can't do it, and they also can't outsource it to other folks.

And so, CISA was in on the game, the CDC was in on the game. It was a whole of government, a leviathan of government agencies that we exposed in that lawsuit. We talk about in the book, and we just can't let this happen again. The First Amendment is so important, it's the beating heart of our Constitution. But what we found is that the left will do anything to aggregate and exercise power.

We saw it during COVID, we saw it during this censorship regime, too.

So, for those people who think, well, Trump does the same thing, you're wrong. Trump was president. And he was running against Joe Biden. If that had been exposed, those emails being confirmed and the work he was doing, the illegal work he was doing in Ukraine, and what he was profiting off China, found out to be lying in the debate and lying through and through. Instead, in August, Zuckerberg and these other powerful CEOs are told: look out.

This is what you're referring to: look out. There's going to be some Russian disinformation in the fall. And when it arrived, I told you, shelve it, shadow ban it. Even if it's the press secretary, ban her. And then we have an election that was directly affected.

Forget about what happened on election day. and the pandemic and all the gymnastics we had to do, or maybe we didn't. But forget about all that. In terms of the voter, They did not know the story because of a concerted effort. By a candidate.

Over a sitting president.

So don't tell me that Trump's losing the levers of power. The levers of power are being used against him and conservatives. That's right. And also in the book, Last Line of Defense, we talk about how we beat back Mark Elias. He was in that election cycle going to all the same.

That guy is evil. Yeah, and we won in Missouri.

Now, he was successful in other places. That affected the 2020 election. But yes, the FBI, by the way, as soon as 2017 it came out, we outlined it in the book too, the last line of defense, is that They were working, Democrat congressional staffers. The FBI was facilitating meetings with big tech companies about things that should be censored, like border security, things like that, that they would just label Russian disinformation to get it off of the, you know, out of the ecosystem and social media. It was, the rot was real and it was deep.

And we exposed it, and we got to undo all this stuff, right? And so, all these agencies like the FBI and CISA that were turned against the American people, that's the kind of accountability I think President Trump's talking about. Absolutely. So, I got to ask you about your armed services background. Have we made gains in expanding our industrial base to be able to make weapons to satisfy our own defense contracts as well as other contracts from other countries?

Have you seen any changes?

Well, yeah, there are signs that we're moving in that direction, but we don't have the industrial base capacity that people think we have. This isn't like World War II, where you just turn the Ford plant into building airplanes. I mean, you need rare earth materials. We need greater capacity. I think some of the consolidation that happened in the 90s has hurt that.

The Pentagon has been slow to evolve.

So what I'm really happy about with the leadership now at the Pentagon, Secretary Hexeth, and others, is that movement to procurement reform. Like take drones, for example. If you have a typical, like drone swarms is a thing, right? If you have a typical procurement process, drones are outdated in six months. Like you can't do that.

You've got to be able to go to industry and say, here's the problem we're trying to solve. Go solve it. And that's a shift that has to happen in the way that we do these things.

Now, it's happening, but it's not happening fast enough.

So we're going to stay on that. Right. I mean, for example, we don't have icebreakers, but we're buying them from Holland. Right. So we have to make some adjustments.

Oh, think about shipbuilding. Brian, think about shipbuilding. China has a bigger navy than we have now. Not a better Navy, but a bigger Navy. Their shipbuilding capacity dwarfs ours, dwarfs ours.

So, this gap is going to only increase. We have to get serious about this. And, um, but like, it would stop you from getting serious about it, Senator. You guys are in the majority in your case. No, no, I think, no, no, that's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying.

So, the end this year's NDAA, for example, I've got some provisions. That's the National Defense Authorization Act, some provisions that get rid of some of the regulatory red tape that prevents smaller contractors from entering the game. We need more innovators, we need more disruptors that can come in and build stuff quicker. And I think that is on the horizon now, and that's what we're aiming towards. But again, this isn't going to happen overnight.

And the materials that we need, the critical minerals that we need to build iPhones and F-15s. Are sourced in other places.

So we got, it's not just like the final shipbuilding facility. It's all the stuff that you need for this stuff. It needs to be onshore. And we've got that stuff in the United States.

So it's not just about that. It's about the EPA. It's about some of these other agencies that made it difficult for us to do those things here, too.

So is there somebody looking at this comprehensively? You can only do so much as a senator. I mean, if you see this and you got there just a few years ago, the others seeing like Roger Wicker has been there for such a long time, are they seeing a way to address these things holistically? Yes, but I will say this. You do need You do need an administration that understands it.

And I do think. One of the reasons why I was so supportive of President Trump's cabinet picks was that he put together a team of disruptors of reformers. And my questions for the defense team as they came in was, how do you view these things? And I think they see it the way we see it, which is we need reform and we need it fast because we got to be able to build things quicker. And uh, and have more of them, and I think they get it.

But you have to have people on the inside, honestly, that that share this vision because they're the ones that are pulling the levers. But you also have to create, like, look, I mean, if you have some mid-level bureaucrat at the Pentagon who only has a four-year stint, the incentives for them are just to not make mistakes, right? To get to the next job, we got to change that dynamic on the inside, too. Right. And I think that they're doing that.

So, well, good. Congratulations on your book and all the great work you've done and be able to, but you break down the law so everybody understands it. And I truly look forward to getting through your whole book: The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court. Senator Eric Schmidt, thank you. Thanks, Brian.

Take care. All right. Back in a moment. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. From the Fox News Podcasts Network.

Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin.

It's Brian Killmead. Hey, welcome back. Just a quick reminder: coming up in 48 hours, I'll be in Dallas, Texas, 7:30 local, 8:30 Eastern on stage, and Fox Nation will be streaming it. It'll be history, livery, and laughs. We bring history to life.

I have seven history books, two sports books.

So it'll be inspirational, it'll be patriotic and motivational, all in one. But it's going to be fun. And we pick out different areas of my history books and we just reenact them. In a way, I think you'll find entertaining but accurate. And we have a really good time.

And Will Kane's going to be joining me, and we always have my staples, Rick Thatcher and Pat O'Rourke, are going to be there. And we're going to be streaming for two and a half hours.

So the sh show is going to be different. It also highlights the comeback of Donald Trump as well as the war on history.

So it's going to be real. It's going to be fun. Just go to BrianKilme.com for Dallas.

Sophie in Richmond, Virginia, coming up on September 27th. in Richmond, Virginia. And then November first, Pottstown over in Pennsylvania. And that's sounding like crazy. Already in Dallas, we've hit a record VIPs, over one hundred.

It's supposed it was initially going to be a couple of dozen, But the interest of meeting before the show and getting the inside story on everything going on in the news and the show, I guess, is alluring, and that's pretty cool. Keep it here, and don't forget One Nation on Sunday at 10 o'clock on Fox News Channel. You're listening to the Brian Kill Meet Show. This is Jimmy Fala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding, it's only a three-hour show.

Listen live at Noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown, Manhattan. Manhattan. It's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead.

Hi, everyone. Brian Kilmead here. Thanks so much. We have a busy hour coming your way. Bill Melusian, fresh off America's newsroom, will be joining us at the bottom of the hour.

Josh Crash Hour brings us inside politics. I've got some numbers I've not gone over yet. I'm going to go over with Josh just to see, see how many people. Have left the Democratic Party. We know their fundraising numbers are historically low, like the lowest in five years, being really outraised by Republicans, which is somewhat strange.

Why? Because usually, when you're in the off year, the opposition party gets some momentum to have big results in the midterms. At least that's the hope and that tradition. But it's not happening yet. Maybe it's Ken Martin's fault.

I'm not sure. Or maybe they don't have a leader, but I feel differently about the leadership. I think the leadership emerges after you find the issues.

So let's get to the big three. Number three.

So, I don't want to get ahead of any administration announcements, but we are looking at a whole host of points of leverage we can exercise over California and other states to make sure they comply with the law. Sanctuary cities are killing people because you allow these violent criminals to set up shop in your cities. There you go. That is sanctuary scrutiny. Pam Bonnie brings down the hammer on places like Boston, soon-to-be Illinois.

And we know we're already in D.C. And meanwhile, we have this other real-life horror story. An illegal alien who can't read English in an 18-wheeler kills three innocent people. More on this. Number two.

This is radical rigging. Of a midterm election, radical. But right now, we're walking down a damn different path. We're fighting fire with fire. I'm going to punch these sons of bitch in the mouth.

Mouth. Right. And Gavin Newsom certainly knows fire. Gerrymandering madness heats up as Texas gets in quorum, gets its quorum, and they'll look to bang out five new seats in the House to better represent what Texas is, and that's a Republican state. California tries to match, but they got a few hurdles to clear.

New York wants to do the same thing, they got major hurdles to clear. We'll explain. Number This will not work. Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly. Discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere.

Really? Sergei Lavrov? Vladimir Putin? Pulling a fast one as his minions begin to walk back, which was agreed on, at least in principle, in Alaska and then reaffirmed on Monday at the Oval Office in Washington. Trilateral talks somewhat delayed.

We'll see if 47 decides to turn the screws. Josh Krashauer joins us now. Josh, I think it's very interesting that we are the foreign minister, Lavra, who's been around forever, make these statements about security guarantees has to include China and Russia. We're not going to look to hurry up trilateral talks. A lot different tone than the president's been getting from Vladimir Putin himself.

And they've been quiet at the White House. Rare. Yeah, I mean, Brian, despite all the pump and circumstance from both the summit at the White House between. Zelensky and European leaders, and then Friday previously in Alaska, where it seemed like. Putin was making some concessions as part of a negotiation process.

This is Vladimir Putin being Vladimir Putin, trying to string the US along, trying to delay any penalties and sanctions for continuing to kill civilians, continuing to strike into the heart of Ukraine, despite these negotiations taking place. And look, I think the Uh each. Who did get I mean there were there were plans for the United States to imp impose sanctions. Uh there was a goal of having a ceasefire at least before the these talks and and any deal was struck. And Putin did pocket those concessions from the Allies, from the United States.

And they seem to be just playing us along.

So I think the big question now is when Trump already posted on social media this morning him getting sort of Sick of his act. And the question then is, when do the penalties come? When does the sanctions come? I know Lindsey Graham in the Senate has got a penalty to go when when you know Putin isn't isn't cooperating and isn't compromising. There are penalties and sanctions that are ready to go.

And I think the next question may be when do we start imposing sanctions or penalties on Russia? Because they're clearly stringing us along. Again, last night, killing many civilians in Ukraine as part of a continuous attack against the country. And the president's got increased support, Josh. I'm sure you know, about nine points for Ukrainian aid.

In the war, because the president's speaking more practically about who Vladimir Putin is. Hey, I could deal with him, but the guy's going back on his word. He's tapping me along. And now Republicans are realizing it's not a Democrat-Republican issue. Mike Lawler says he hopes the president is ready to act.

Cut five. If Putin refuses to agree to a ceasefire, if he refuses to agree to a peace deal. then the United States and our European allies must enact secondary sanctions on Russia, cripple their oil network and support Ukraine further with military aid and assistance. I'm sure the President realizes there's got to be ramifications, right? You'd hope so.

And I think he the post he put on Truth Social this morning seems to suggest he's getting getting tired of being strung along. Look, the politics have changed. I think a lot of folks who might have wanted to go the diplomatic route in the Republican Party voters the base have seen Putin not doing anything to achieve peace, not literally trying to play Donald Trump and and got the red carpet in Alaska. It looked like we may be at we could have been at that moment where something could have been accomplished. And Putin is just Privately laughing and stringing the United States along.

So I you can see the polling and how the Republican Party has realized sort of what Russia's true intentions are. They don't really want to have peace. They don't want to they obviously started the war. They don't view anything other than conquering Ukrainian territory as their goal. And they are going to try to string this along as much as possible.

So look, I think there are a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill. There probably would be a huge supermajority in the Senate right now to impose more sanctions, oral sanctions. Lindsey Graham has been running point on that. And look, Trump also talked about the tariffs on India also playing a role in terms of shutting down or at least hurting the Russian oil economy. But hit them where it hurts.

There are definitely pressure points that still can be imposed on Putin and Russia. But the question is: do we have the will to really put the pressure on? And maybe that's the way to get Russia to make concessions and come to the bargaining table. I want to talk politics now. Democrats really are in a crisis.

They've lost 2 million of voters, have left their party over the last four years, especially recently. Swing voters to Republicans. 4.5 million swing to the Republican Party. A lot of people have gone independent. I mean, and these are some battleground states.

Look at these numbers in Pennsylvania. Dems were plus 517,000 in 2020.

Now they're plus 53,000. The steepest plunge, Nevada, after and then after that, West Virginia, but it's more tilted toward Republicans. Florida, 1.2 million voter swing.

So Nevada and then Florida. Pretty precipitous. And in North Carolina, a place that many people think is tilting left, in 2020, the Democrats had a 400,000 registration edge. It's down down to 17,000 in 2025, along with the fact, Josh. that they can't raise money.

A five-year low in raising money.

So, what is the pulse? Not the spin, but the pulse with the Democratic Party. Are they worried?

Well, they don't have much of a pulse. They don't have much leadership. I mean, the party is rudderless, and right now that vacuum is being filled by the furthest left activist types, the Zorad Mamdanis and people that are trying to push the party in a socialist-minded direction that won't win more elections. In fact, it's sort of a vicious cycle, Brian, because a lot of the moderates and the independents are leaving the Democrats. Those are the ones primarily who are deaffiliating themselves with the Democratic Party.

So the people who are left in the Democratic Party are much more left-wing, much more activist. Much more likely to nominate the Mamadani types in these key primary elections that are closed just within the Democratic Party.

So I don't know. I mean, look, without a strong leader, without someone who's going to really set the tone of how the party needs to move to the middle and how to reject some of the ideological baggage that cost them so badly in the 2024 election, they're going to have these problems and it's probably going to get worse. Going forward. I think the one stat, I mean, the New York Times story about the registration data, it was worth the whole read. One thing that was particularly compelling that I didn't even appreciate until reading it was there are more new voters, younger voters, that the majority of voters that are new in the last year are now Republicans.

Those are younger voters predominantly. Whereas 2018, Trump's first term, two-thirds of new voters were Democrats.

So we've gone from the youngest voters, the newer registrants. Being Democrats overwhelmingly in 2018 to now a majority are Republicans. And that is the trend. That is the movement and where the politics are moving. And it shows the Democrats are out of step with a significant chunk of the American electoral.

And the numbers are young voters under 45. In 2018, Democrats had 66% of registered voters.

Now it's down to 48%. For men, they had in 2020 49% of registered voters. It's down to 39.

So they're going independents or Republicans. I also look at the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, if it was held today. Small sample, but Politico did it. And they say it's Newsom with 25, Harris, 19, Mayor Pete with 13. You think Newsom's making progress by being the foil to Trump?

Well, so it's interesting because the way in this like kind of democratic this new democratic activist ecosystem, the way to get attention is either going far to the left, like doing the Mamdani social media kind of playbook, which is not viable at all electorally outside of the deepest blue cities. or doing what Gavin Newsome is doing, which is trolling and bullying and acting kind of ridiculous. um, but getting attention. And and and and look, that may be the mod I I think i in the end that Democrats know they can't win with socialism in in in most parts of the country.

So I I don't think that's a viable option outside of, you know, Seattle, New York City and and so on. Newsom may actually end up being the model that Democrats embrace. I think the fact that he's getting more followers, that he's But Josh, you know the problem with him is record. He's not a moderate. Yeah, well, I mean, look.

I mean, he's got a terrible record in California.

Well, that's part of the problem. Why are Democrats, why are registered Democrats, many of them who are moderate, leaving the party because of their record on immigration, because of their record on crime, because of their record on woke culturally that's not solving. California is the epicenter of a lot of those problems. And that's eventually going to be, if he runs for president, if he's the nominee, that's going to be a big, big vulnerability for New York. Yeah, if anyone looks in his background.

So, this is how the Democrats want to play it. I feel different. Everyone says, who's the Democratic leader? First, pick your issues. Tell me the issues that you want to run on, and then the leader will emerge.

Here's James Carville. He thinks that the problem's Vance. Cut to 38. He's entitled to education. I'll give him that.

Guess where he went? to a place called Oxfordshire. In England. which is a tony, wealthy place that rich Londoners go to. It's called the Martha's Vineyard of England.

You mean you you You can't vacation in your wife and kids in his own country? But what does he do? He goes to a tony English village. And by the way, they wouldn't even let him in the best pub because in place. In the pub said they wouldn't, they wouldn't serve you.

This is what use JD Vance and just kick the out of him every chance you get. Is that a tactic? Is America wanting to see that? Being aggressive against J.D. Vance?

Is that new? No, I mean pe I think most Sensible swing voters want more civility. They want more moderation in our politics. They don't want you know, they may disagree with our elected leaders, but they don't want them to be heckled like they've seen the movie, Josh. They know he came from nothing.

So, were they going to pretend like he's an elitist? He came from squalor. Ron Howard did the movie. The book was a bestseller for five years. Yeah.

And look, it's it's absurd, and I think that is a losing strategy. I mean, look, there's plenty of things you can go after the Vice President on. I mean, we I mean, by the way, Brian, we saw this play in the first Trump's first term where you had of official elected officials, people who served in the administration being heckled at restaurants and sham, you know, just all kinds of behavior. And did that play out well politically for Democrats? Absolutely not.

It actually, you know, turned off their appeal to the average voter, and we saw the election results therein.

So, you know, they played that game before. I guess they're trying to do a sequel, but that's not what wins over those persuadable voters that are looking that may not like. There's a lot of people who are not happy with either party. And that strategy is only going to play to the most. Activist base types.

It's not going to play to the swing voters in the middle. Polls don't really matter much.

Some are even before Labor Day after the president's only been on the job seven months. But I saw his approval rating went from 42 to 47.

Some have it at 53.

So people are feeling good about this diplomatic shuttle diplomacy. But The other thing that I find interesting is the DC crackdown, because you guys live there.

So, if you want to play politics, you know somebody that's been carjacked. You know somebody that no longer walks down these blocks or feels good at Union Station.

So, you want to say what Chuck Schumer says, I take a walk every morning. He leaves after he's surrounded by Secret Service. What is the how is it resonating with the crackdown on crime in DC?

Well, so as a DC native and someone who has seen the crime firsthand, Denying that it's a problem is the worst strategy for Democrats. In fact, it's actually interesting when you look back a few years when President Biden was in office. Because the DC City Council was actually trying to decrease penalties for carjackings and other felonies, it became such a national political hot potato that even the Democrats and eventually President Biden himself basically overruled the city council and made sure that the penalties remained in place. And eventually D.C. actually mandated tougher penalties on crime as a response to the lax.

Handling of crime in the in the district. Look, I I think there was a polling. I mean, B C I I I th the big question I I think a lot of The National Guard and other government officials being in DC have a lot to do with immigration as much as crime. I think that's why Stephen Miller was with JD Vance at Union Station yesterday. I think about like a third at least of the arrests have actually been on immigration issues, immigration, illegal immigration or immigration overstays.

So I mean look I th it's interesting that that's sort of the subtext to a lot of the the the fight over Washington DC. I I think obviously immigration has been a winning issue. The White House, but I mean, I think. The issue of crime, Janine Pirro, I talk about, we interviewed Janine Pirro, and she made such an essential point, which is that in D.C., that there are people under the age of 25, essentially juveniles, that judges have the ability to basically let them off scot-free, murderers and people who commit very violent crimes. There's a pipeline from these judges basically let a lot of these very, very hardened criminals back out on the street in no time.

There are things I think that can be done with. You know, some pressure perhaps on the DC government to actually crack down. And I'm up against it, Josh, but I would just add recruiting into it. I would say we're going to add a thousand cops. I want to put that recruiting tables in front of the National Guard.

We've got to get bulk up this police force. And that's what they could leave behind after 30 or 60 days. Josh, always great. Fascinating time. Fox News radio political analyst, Josh Krashauer, editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider.

Go get him, Josh. Back in a moment. It's Brian Kilmade. Listen to the all-new Brett Baer podcast, featuring common ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Baer favorites, like his all-star panel, and much more. Available now at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Information you want. Truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. How is it a power grab or how is it a stunt when we've already declined murders by 35% in nine days? How many people are living and breathing today because Donald Trump had the willpower to say, you know what, we're sick of DC being a home to lawlessness.

We're going to bring some public order back to the nation's capital.

So what I would say to Gavin Newsom or to anybody else in some of these big blue states or big blue cities is you can have law and order. You can have common decency. You can have public spaces that young families can go to again. And that's what he was doing yesterday in his press conference, and he spoke to Laura after. The vice president had a low profile over the last few days.

With the President of the United States. I think he may I'm not sure if he won the trip to Alaska, but In terms of foreign policy, it's a bit of a step back. And I'm encouraged by that because I'm encouraged. J.D. Vance got a great intellect, very confident.

I've seen him in adverse situations shine. I watched him kill on debates. In fact, looking back, I remember his Ohio debates, and he was good when he was battling to be senator, when it was a tough fight, by the way. And they got a a big boost from President Trump at that time and it ended up paying off for him. But I always wear bad foreign policy.

It tends to be way right. And maybe that's why President Trump is leaving him out of some things. Bill Melusian joins me in the studio.

Well, we've got everything's on tap. Don't move. Hey, I'm Trey Gaddy, host of the Trey Gaddy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcast.com.

From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Killmead. He's got a very poor record, and we showed that when we did a debate. But he's spending all this time being cheeky on social media, and yet people can't get permits to rebuild their homes in Southern California. We had an issue where you had an illegal alien truck driver that got a commercial driver's license in the state of California, employed by a California company. Kill three people in Florida.

This guy didn't even speak English. We're bringing him up on charges.

So that is a Governor Ron DeSantis incense yesterday who sent his lieutenant governor into California to get back this truck driver here illegally since 2018, who mysteriously has a commercial license but doesn't seem to be able to read English. Bill Melusian all over the story, as he is almost every national immigration story. Fox News is national correspondent, Fresh Off, hosting with Dana Perino, and will be fall next week too. Bill, great to see you. Good to see you.

Thanks for having me. This is a big story, right? It is. It's huge. Yeah.

Crossed in 2018. Yep. Crossed in 2018 illegally, San Diego border in California. The Trump administration put him in what's called expedited removal. Basically, they like very fast-track deportation.

But the guy claimed fear, said he was scared of going back to India.

So he made an asylum claim, and for whatever reason, USCIS approved that fear claim, and he was released with a $5,000 bond. At some point, he gets commercial driver's licenses from the sanctuary states of California and Washington. And we now know in hindsight, doesn't speak a lick of English. Didn't pass any road tests for the road signs. Doesn't know what kind of signs are on the road.

Ends up in Florida. Does an illegal U-turn on the highway and kills three people, three American citizens.

So, a few things.

So we got to find out the truck company that hired him. Did he forge those licenses? Were they forged? Nope, they were real. They were real.

Okay, so they're real.

So who gave it to him? Is it a road test like you have to sit in the passenger seat of a truck driver and they got to impress you that they did? We could find out who that person is. It's also, can you interpret the signs on the road that say don't do a U-turn in the middle of the highway, right? Yeah, so yeah, it was the states of Washington and the states of California that both gave him those commercial drivers licenses.

As for the company, it sounds like the feds have already pulled their license.

So they're not going to be allowed to do business anymore in terms of giving out. Or hiring drivers that are illegal aliens.

So there's still a lot of murkiness on this. You know, the guy's being extradited back to Florida today. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says they're going to throw the book at him. They're not just going to hand him over to ICE so he can be deported. They're going to try to put him in prison for a long time.

Then, once they're done with him, they'll deport him. I was shocked to see, and you probably weren't, that there were 11,000 UAC's unaccompanied minors. who were given to people that were not related to them without FBI uh checks over the last four years. Minimum. That's kids just fanned out by someone who says, Yeah, I'm for I'm for him or her or they give him an address and they send him on a bus there.

The border wasn't a border. It was a speed bump during the Biden administration. I thought they cared about kids. Remember that whole thing? They claim to, but actually doing it is another thing.

And I can't tell you how many UACs, unaccompanied kids I saw down there at the border. I mean, they literally just get abandoned at the edge of the water, sometimes with stuffed animals, kids like first grade, second grade. They get scooped up by Border Patrol. They get transferred to HHS. And then the Biden administration was so desperate to get them out of custody because they didn't want kids in cages, right?

They didn't want anything that would generate like a Trump headline.

So anybody who stepped forward and said, I'll take that kid, or I'm a family member, or I'll sponsor them. There wasn't a whole lot of vetting going on because they wanted those kids out of federal custody quick to keep those numbers down. Because one thing that, you know, most of the media didn't cover the border, but when it comes to like little kids and unaccompanied minors, that was something they were interested in.

So they wanted to keep those numbers low. And now in hindsight, we're seeing what's happened.

So let's talk about ICE. They had 10,000 openings, 100,000 applications. Are those numbers accurate? They are, yeah.

So they'll be able to fill those no problem. But Uh do you feel as though the accusation is they're picking up anybody here illegally? Can you tell me what their target list is? The priority remains worst first.

So, for ICE, they're the ones typically doing the targeted stuff, right? We're going to sit on this house at 3 in the morning and get this guy who has a previous record for child molestation. They are still going after the worst of the worst.

Now, the more controversial stuff. Is what Border Patrol's been doing. They're the ones kind of going around to Home Depots and car washes and immigration courts and scooping those people up.

Now, you know, Democrats and the left are very upset about that, saying, You were only going to go after the worst of the worst, the gang members. They didn't say they were only going to go after them. How many times did we hear Tom Homan go on television saying, if you're in this country illegally, you're on the table? We want you looking over your shoulder. How many times did Trump say during the campaign we're going to do the biggest mass deportation campaign in history?

They're doing both, right? The truth is, they're arresting a lot of bad apples. They're going after a lot of criminals, using a lot of resources to find those bad apples and the gang members. But yes, at the same time, they are also arresting people who are just in the U.S. illegally and may not have any other criminal record.

They're. Thought is. A Democrats say no one's above the law, right? Apparently unless you're an illegal immigrant.

So now, with the focus on sanctuary cities, legally They didn't have much success in the first term to try to overturn these sanctuary cities.

Now they're going to try to store up funds for them again. And in speaking with The sitting senator, Eric Schmidt, he says they're going to be more targeted in their funding to try to crack down because right now they're going to focus on Boston. You know, it's going to be Chicago soon and then Philadelphia. We know New Mexico is taking preemptive action now to keep Trump out.

So, have you seen a comprehensive legal plan as well as a law enforcement plan to crack down on these sanctuary cities?

So, what they're doing different this time around in Trump 2.0 is apart from threatening, pulling funding and everything, they are taking the legal route and they're filing lawsuits. And there are different kinds of lawsuits. Like, they just sued the city of Los Angeles, I think it was a month ago. And What they're arguing is that Los Angeles is violating the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution, which says feds supersede state and local. And how are they doing that?

Because they're treating federal officers different than local and state law enforcement by not sharing information with them, by not honoring detainers, by not honoring warrants, by banning communication with them. You are treating a federal agent differently than you would an LAPD officer or an LA County Sheriff's Deputy.

So that seems to be on Pretty strong legal footing when it comes to the supremacy clause.

So that's kind of working its way through the system right now, and they're also planning on doing that in Chicago, New York, other places.

So will it work? I don't know, but it's at least a different approach than what they tried last time around. It seems that one thing that D.C. Crackdown is helping is they've temporarily lifted the Sanctuary City status.

So they're picking up a lot of legals, aren't they? They are. And there was actually just a viral video that I don't know if you saw it, went out yesterday of an illegal immigrant being arrested in D.C., right near Capitol Hill. And He's standing next to his car. He tries to take off running.

ICE agents tackle him, and he's screaming in Spanish. I'm not a criminal. I'm just here to work. I want to see my family. And it went viral, right?

Everybody was, oh, this is terrible. ICE are Nazis. They're Gestapos. It's horrible. And then a couple hours later, it comes out.

This guy is a previously deported illegal immigrant who was arrested in D.C. for aggravated sexual assault of a child under the age of 13, had other crimes, and also had, like, I believe it was a DUI.

So it was a criminal alien, but people didn't wait for the facts. And yeah, it's part of the crackdown. I want to come back and talk a little bit about California. Your governor with a low approval rating in the state is leading the charge for the Democrats in 2028. And he's also taking on Texas.

Is it going to be effective? Bill Melusian lives there, right? Yeah. Because he does not want to take a lot of money home. He wants to make a lot of money, but give most of it to his state.

And I do too. In New York, absolutely. I'm in the same situation. It makes no sense. Back in a moment.

Diving deep into today's top stories. It's Brian Kilmead. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts.

A talk show that's real. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. I want to say this one more time so everyone understands. Ian Sams. Who was the White House spokesperson?

for a significant amount of Joe Biden's time as president. interacted with him two times. Two taps. You know, we're going to continue to bring people in. Um And again, this person, Ian Sams, is the one that would.

would counter everything. Robert Hurr, or anytime anyone would suggest that Joe Biden wasn't mentally fit, he would say, No, he's at the top of his game. He tweeted out several times, he gave interviews on MSNBC. Every time I've interacted with the president, He was sharp. He asked great questions.

In there, under oath. He interacted with President two times the entire time.

So that was obviously James Coleman, Chairman of Oversight, investigating in what Joe Biden was able to do at the end and how detached he was, mentally incapable. We know that he had a small cadres surrounding him. No one really denied that. But when it comes to the pardons and the thousands of pardons, they said non-violence. We know they were violent people, pardon.

We don't know the rhyme or reason. We know the Auto Pen signed a lot of it.

So they're trying to get to the bottom of it. Bill Melusian, my guest, and Bill's fresh off America's newsroom. Ian Sams, we watched him go behind closed doors. As a White House spokesperson, how rare do you think it is? I'll act like this is a mystery.

How rare do you think it is to only meet with the president twice? That's unheard of. How is that even possible? How are you a spokesman? For the President of the United States, going on cable TV all the time.

Aggressive, too. Very aggressive. He'd go after media outlets if he felt they got something wrong. And in the course of four years, he'd been with him two times. I mean, how is that?

stunning breaking news to come out of that. I mean the thing is you're under oath. And the other thing they must be thinking about is like, why am I taking the fall? Biden's got no future. I want to do something after this.

But I also think anyone involved with Joe Biden, most Democrats. Democratic operatives say, I can't afford any linkage because what happened in this last few months, ever since that debate, horrible vice president, terrible president, and then an incapable president. Robert, everything about Robert Hurst, everything you want to know about him is in the Robert Hurr report. And then you have this. And he was one of the people who was going after Robert Hurr.

Remember, Robert Hur got attacked when he wrote up that report and basically said he's a well-meaning, elderly man with memory issues. He got dragged through the mud for saying that. And then everybody got to see the debate last summer. And I mean, with this, like meeting the president two times in four years, but being a spokesman for him, I guess, Brian, now we're seeing why so many of the aides are. Pleading the fifth, right?

When they go in there, they don't want to say anything. I guess credit to Ian Sams for being willing to answer that question, right? Because now we have at least an answer. We know that in that Biden White House, that one of his chief spokesperson only encountered him two times in four years.

So, KJP, she was clueless. She didn't prepare. But the other thing I'm thinking about in retrospect, she had nothing to say. Do you know why? She wasn't meeting with the president, he wasn't making his decisions.

So, the reason why Caroline Levin could come out and say, What 25 topics do you want? You want to talk about Venezuela? You want to talk about Russia? Yeah, I was in that meeting. I was in that meeting.

There's a lot going on. There was nothing going on with Joe Biden. Yeah, half the time Caroline Levitt comes out, she literally says before and answer, I just talked to the president 10 minutes ago. He said X, Y, and Z. And now it makes you wonder, like when KJP had her binder, she was always flipping through, like, who was putting the content in that binder.

If she wasn't meeting with the president personally, I mean, maybe she was, but we'll have to find out how many times she talked to President Biden, right? And what she would all, every answer would have to flip, flip, flip through the binder. Caroline Levitt doesn't have any binders up there. See, you know, what's so interesting is that they tried to get rid of her after the midterms. And she essentially couldn't get rid of her.

Why? Because she's a lesbian and she's black and she's president setting, and she played that card.

So they left this terrible press secretary there who obviously had not a great subject. And because she trumpeted the fact that how the first, the first, the first about all that, their political correctness hamstrung their efforts to get the best possible people. And there was a lot of reporting out there that. They wanted John Kirby to do a little bit more of the press room stuff. And she kind of.

Block that from happening. Maybe call his reporter by dropping all the issues you just talked about. But yeah, I mean, like for me personally, I can't tell you how many times I'd be at the border and I'd be listening to KJP and my IFB at the White House podium saying the border's closed, the border's secure, we're not releasing people, everything's fine, we're doing more than anybody to secure the border. As Brian, I've got 700 single adult men from Africa walking into the country behind me, waving to our cameras, and then I see them dropped off at a 7-Eleven or a parking lot later that same day. Right.

Just released. I want to talk. Yeah, I mean, it must have just driven you nuts because you knew they were flat out lying, and the only person asking the question is Peter or Jackie, and there was no follow-up. If they gave him a question, right? Right, right.

Although, yeah, Biden never talked to him, but you know, to KJP, it's crazy. Credit, and Jensaki did talk to him. Jensake was good. You know, I want to talk about California. How are they getting away with this?

You have these devastating fires in the richest, most influential place in the country. Pacific Palisades is beautiful. Altadina is a working-class area, but you can't get any. permits to stop building Rebuilding your life, let alone the insurance problems everybody's having who doesn't have the money to lay out first. Bring me inside what's going on in California.

Is it a big deal locally? It is. And remember, after the fires, they all had the Karen Bass and the county and news, they all had these press conferences saying, We are cutting all the red tape. We're going to fast-track everything. We're going to get everything rebuilt.

If you go through the burn zone, there's barely anything being rebuilt. The permits are like molasses in January. And the media's eye is off the ball. Everyone's talking about the redistricting. Everyone's talking about Trump.

There's always some other thing they're talking about. And I'll tell you one thing: like the ICE raids in LA have been so beneficial for Karen Bass, and that's why she's bashing them every day. Every minute they're not talking about the fires and her response and her being in Ghana is a win for her.

So she's openly embracing this fight with immigration. And you talk to the LA residents who live in that area, they are pissed off. A lot of them had their insurance dropped before. Beforehand, because the state is so bad with insurance, and then the fires come through, and a lot of them are left with absolutely nothing and no way to rebuild in a purveying process that's going to take years, if not a decade. How does that net stick to Governor Newsom?

Because he points to the local. Remember, like when the fires were going on and there was no, there were no water, there was no water in the fire hydrants. CNN interviews Newsome and he says, and they ask him, Where's the water? And he goes, Well, that's the locals. Ask the locals.

They're going to have to figure that out.

So some of it may stick to Newsome, but I mean, a lot of it is falling on Karen Bass. A lot of it fell on Karen Bass and the budget with the LA Fire Department and the fact that she was in Africa. And she, I mean, it's been. Almost eight months since those fires, and it's kind of Kind of starting to wear away.

Now, the story out in LA is all about ICE and the immigration raids. And look, there's not even been a result of the fire that's been released yet, like the cause of the fire. The ATF has been investigating it, LAFD has been investigating it. We still don't know how that fire started, you know?

So, right now, just looking at the president's approval, the governor's approval rating wants to be president.

So, according to the Emerson poll, I don't think we look at that poll, but 44% approval. Does that sound right? For Gavin Newsom in California? That sounds high, doesn't it? In California, I think it's a little bit higher than that.

I mean, remember, he survived a recall. I mean, he does have Democrat support out there. You know, he's been voted in as governor two times. Nationally, I think his numbers are a lot lower. You know, what's funny, Brian, is like what gets you elected in California immediately makes you unelectable at the national level.

Look what happened with Kamala Harris, right? Transgender surgeries for illegal aliens in May. Let's greed everything. Let's double the price of gas. Yeah.

Let's not oil and drill. Let's up taxes to the point we have no industry. Let's keep traffic terrible and don't know how to build a railroad. How about this? This came down in the middle of your show.

A appeals court judge has ruled that the $515 million fraud case penalty against Donald Trump be thrown out. They said, Yeah, you were wrong, but the penalty was excessive. Trump was ordered to pay $354 million after a judge determined he had committed fraud, but now that is gone. With interest payments, it would have been $515 million. In addition, Trump was barred from running the Trump organization for three years.

Number one, he's not running for four years, but This is little by little, all this stuff is getting tossed. And that's what the appellate process is for, right? Remember, Trump said he was going to appeal it and win it. And what a huge loss for A.G. Letitia James.

Remember last year, she was sitting in the front row of that courtroom every day with a smirk on her face. You could just see it on her face. I'm getting Donald Trump. I'm getting Donald Trump. And the whole idea of this case was she said he was basically falsely inflating the values of his properties, including Mar-a-Lago, $18 million, and other business transactions.

And Trump kept saying, there's no victim here. Everybody's happy with the business within the banks. Yeah, everybody's happy here. I'm going to appeal and I'm going to win. And it took a long time.

Thanks, Bill. Yep. The Bill Malusion is going to be on tomorrow from 9 to 11. Or if he wants to stay longer. It's the Will Kane Show.

Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday on FoxNews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss a show. Get the podcast five days a week at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.