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So glad you're here. I usually say I'm from 48th and 6th in Midtown Manhattan, but the guy with the deep voice says I'm on Long Island and I'm to believe it. And little did you know, I actually went here for college and graduated, and this place has even gotten nicer since. The Tilla Center is fantastic since that time. The pioneers, I don't know if they're being politically correct or not, we were the pioneers, but I guess that insulted somebody.
Now we're the sharks. Right, I mean, what is wrong with the pioneer? The pioneer community gets angry. Right, and how big is that community? It's large, in fact.
See, I think you can learn a lot from my experience here. A lot of people introduce their guests, especially on radio. They think it's important, but I don't. No. Just keep talking.
Don't need. Josh Holmes and Comfortably Smug are two of the four people involved in one of the most successful political podcasts in the country. They're co-hosts of the Ruthless podcast. And I was lucky enough to be a guest, and now you're part of the Fox family. Welcome to both of you.
Thanks so much for having me.
So, have you ever seen me in person do the big three? I don't know.
So, the Patriot Awards are here tonight, and that's going to be a big theme. We're going to salute America. Can you get that concept across? And before we get to the guys, let's get to the big three. Number three.
If it doesn't go the way that President Trump wants, you know, he loses a lot of the flexibility that we believe Congress granted him to deal with these emergencies we're facing, right, of the trade deficit, the loss of manufacturing, et cetera. Tariffs in trouble. Perhaps we are trying to read too much between the lines as the Supreme Court pokes and prods both sides. If it is struck down, all sides agree with one thing: it'll be pure global chaos. Number two.
And now because my Republican colleagues refused to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, we know that for tens of millions of Americans who are now in the open enrollment period, They are experiencing dramatically increased premiums, copays, and deductibles. The most boring man in America, Hakeem Jeffries, and also telling an untruth, shut down not over yet, as moderate Dems get stopped on their way to end it all. What will it take to end this standoff, and how the media shows once again they're committed to selling the Democrat story? Number one. On November 5th, 2024, the American people reclaimed our government.
We restored our sovereignty. We lost a little bit of sovereignty last night in New York, but... We'll take care of it. Don't worry about it. The GOP is off-beat, off-year elections.
The left has a reason to celebrate for now, but how long as the divide emerges between the Bernie bros and the liberals on the left, and what the GOP takeaway should be from their terrible Tuesday? Keep in mind with the Patriot Awards tonight, Sean Hattery's going to be hosting. Jason Aldean's going to be here. His lovely wife Brittany's going to be here. Melania Trump is going to be getting an award, and there's a lot, a lot of surprises.
Josh and Smug, welcome. Hey, official. Great to be here. First off, on the civil war that's already happening on the left, and I'll play some clips. I mean, Chuck Schumer yesterday was supposed to do a press conference.
He's late. Bernie's in the audience. Why? And instead, he says, well, what do you think? The reporters start questioning him.
He said, they go, why don't you go ask just a few questions? And he hopped behind the microphone. And he starts saying, everybody knows nobody wanted Mondami to win, and the establishment didn't want Mondame to win, and they didn't want me to win. Wow, this is an open family fight. It couldn't happen to a better group of people from my perspective.
But you're not surprised. I'm not surprised. I mean, look, Chuck Schumer's been trying to avoid this entire discussion basically all year. I mean, the reason that the government is shut down, in addition to election shenanigans, is because Chuck Schumer is deathly afraid of AOC, New York Democrats, who've just chosen Mom Dani. He thinks he's not only going to lose his job as a minority leader in the Senate, but maybe his job altogether as a senator as a result of all that.
So he's just been running scared from the very beginning. I think Bernie and everybody else know it. Smung?
Well, that's the thing: is the whole reason that Chuck Schumer is in this tough spot is AOC is going to primary him. He's terrified of that. She's been fundraising like nobody's business, and they've shown that the grassroots of that party is energized behind communism. It's just straight up communism. Right.
And I don't think Chuck is, Governor Shapiro probably isn't, Governor Bashir probably isn't, but they feel disrespected because Bernie had that nomination twice. Oh, yeah. And now it's revealed that Hillary took it one time, and then they sidelined everybody else and put Biden in air the next time. But now he's too old this time, but he's angry. He is angry.
And honestly, he has a right to be at some level. I mean, they've done more at the top of the Democratic Party to try to set. I mean, look, we had a primary without a primary. The Democratic voters didn't even get to choose last time around who they haven't chosen since Obama and Hillary. Right, since 2008.
I mean, they've just been moving cards around on the table to try to set the will of the voters. And at some point, that boils over. Oh, by the way, this just in, not that much of a surprise, but the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will not seek re-election. Yeah, primary there, too, by the way. Yep.
I mean, that's one of the factors. I think if nobody was running against her, she probably would just continue in perpetuity, but she's not at a point where she can run a serious election from the left. Or smug, she smashed her hip overseas. And at her age, even though she's in good shape, that makes it probably brutal to go 3,000 miles every other day. But also at the same time, they did not wait for her to say this announcement that she's not going to run.
She got a primary challenge. Scott Wiener jumped in there and said, I am running. And she's this created title of Speaker Woman Emeritus. She's making up a title. They know they don't have their hands on the reins anymore.
It's AOC. It really is indicative of that larger thing that we were talking about. I mean, she's on basically the liberal Democrat Mount Rushmore for her career, and they didn't even have the courtesy. She got pushed out the door. Yeah, exactly.
I think you lived it, you with Mitch McConnell at the time. The only reason Obamacare passed, Obama had thrown in the towel. She said, no, simple majority, we can do it, jam it down their throats, and it passed. And it destroyed Obama's rest of his four years, and he got trashed in the midterms, and we're still trying to bail out that healthcare plan. That's what this is still over.
Yes, no, it's true. And you get, you know, that clip that you played of Hakeem Jeffries is a perfect example of why Americans are paying so much for their health care. I mean, this guy has no concept of a market-based health insurance system. They've broken it, and then they've rebroken it. And like everything that they do, when prices start coming up, they throw more tax dollars.
And they're like, oh, wow, it's surprise, surprise. There's an inflationary effect. Smug, do you think the Republicans have done a good enough job in explaining their position here? When it comes to the health care situation? The healthcare situation, which led to the shutdown.
They're saying that's the reason. I think it's very clear. I mean, this morning when I was watching Fox and Friends, they were talking to the audience. The audience understands that the Democrats are responsible. This is a Schumer shutdown.
But for the Democrats to try to make this about a health care thing, listen, you guys passed what you called the Affordable Care Act. We warned you it wasn't affordable. You passed it anyways.
Now we're living with the results of that, and the blame needs to go to the Democrats for what they've done.
So we have this stat from the Media Research Center. In terms of this shutdown, in terms of what the news, the mainstream news, is covering, if they looked at ABC, all the major networks in CNN, MSNBC, statements favoring Democrats, 83. Statements favoring Republicans, 12%. Incredible. Come on, just not surprised.
Do you know that the 93%, they also did this great study. They asked to look at the late night shows and say, how many people have taken shots in Mondami? I mean, there's so many things you can do and have fun with, even with respect. Do you know that 93% Of the late night references on their monologues were against Mondami's opponents. I mean, come on, this guy's a avowed socialist from Uganda whose mom says he's more of an Indian Ugandan than he is an American.
It's unbelievable. His dad thinks we're all colonists, right?
Well, his dad even said that he sympathizes with suicide bombers. And then this guy still gets elected. The fact of the matter is, the first job this kid has ever had is mayor of New York, and that's a serious job. And I feel bad for the people living in New York City because he's not up to the task. I don't want to correct you guys on air, but I have to for our audience.
His first job was camp counselor. I'm being serious. He was a camp counselor. That was his first job. Then he became an assemblyman.
And then it's the job in New York. That's the resume that the New Yorkers wanted. I didn't know that. A camp counselor? Yeah, that certainly prepares you to run the largest city in the world, no question about it.
We're about to find out.
So, the shutdown, the story today is that Gene Jaheen, Mark Peters, and others. Got together and they were ready to, after the election, which went their way, they were going to cross the aisle and just vote for the continuing resolution with the new end date. And work on get some type of commitments, and they were stopped because the election went their way and they said the shutdown's working for us, Josh. Yeah, I mean, I think that they've shown that they're willing to try to leverage every bit out of the American people, no matter what the pain, right? I mean, they've said that they are, if it works politically, It doesn't matter whether you can pay for your groceries or your health insurance as long as they're the beneficiary of the politics of it.
And that is the leadership of the Democratic Party right now. It's an absolutely vacant, hollow ideology that unfortunately, as you mentioned, the media is not covering like it should. I thought it would be pretty cool to impress you with our list of soundbites. I thought I'd go to Jamie Dimon. He was on another network, but he basically said Mondami is not really a socialist.
And I go, here we go. He's a Marxist. And he said, just listen to him. He will tell you. And he said, I reached out to him once and we exchanged messages.
I'll meet with him. And if it doesn't go well, if I don't think I'm going to bail out. But he just put together a $20 billion building right by Grand Central, so I don't know where he's going. Here's what he said has already happened in New York, Cut 16. Flag.
First of all, people have left New York City. You've seen hedge funds and certain banks and Ken Griffin. And I think it's a bad idea. I mean, you want to have a very competitive city. And I don't want to use labels.
The important thing to me is policies that actually work. Do you make crime better? Do you make the schools better? Do you make the health system better? I want to lift up all citizens too.
I've seen a lot of mayors and governors say things like that, and they fail to do it because their policies may not be so bad, but the implementation stinks.
So to me, get this stuff right. You know, learn. He's a young man. You know, will he get good at it? I see a lot of people in big jobs, including political jobs, they grow into it.
They're learning, they're trusting people, they're figuring it out, they'll make mistakes, they adjust. I've seen a lot of people, they kind of swell into the job. They get worse. It all becomes about them or something like that. I'm hoping he's the good one.
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Learn more on firstnet.com slash public safety first. Hmm. Smoke? Yeah, well, so Jamie Dimon has had a great history of partnering with the US government, really trying to work through issues. You saw it in D.C.
He talks to Trump all the time. He talks to Trump all the time. He wants the best for the country, he wants the best for that city. He's got 50,000 employees in New York City. I think, I hope his optimism is well-grounded, but I don't expect the best from New York City from Donnie.
Yeah, it reminds me of that old saying: hope in one hand, do something else in the other. We'll see what fills up first. Yeah, so he said if he shows potential and shows an openness, but I think on some level, he wants these guys to leave. Because if you don't believe in capitalism, you think capitalism is the problem, you look to the bankers as the problem. But when you do find out how your cities run, it's by successful people giving up.
If you take the city and state and federal taxes, over 50% of their success is written off to all those places. And they're the bad guys. Yeah.
So, I mean, well, I mean, just find me a Democrat any time in the last 20 years where the learning process conveys policies that actually make sense. Right. If you can find one, I'm willing to be optimistic about it. I haven't been able to. And I saw it up close for a lot of years.
The ideology, the energy, and grassroots that has absolutely no connection to the economy whatsoever has always driven what their policy process. Prescriptions are. All right, and lastly, you remember and you lived through the Tea Party, the rise of the Tea Party, and the candidates that came in and were primaried and got rid of a lot of establishment. You were with the establishment as chief of staff with Mitch McComb.
So now, this is what's happening on the left. But on the right, first off, how would you characterize how galvanized are they on the right? In terms of the trend, I think so. Yeah, I think Republicans are remarkably uniform. Very few anti-Trumpers.
Yeah, it's remarkably unified. I think the whole anti-Trump movement just became Democrats, basically, right? But on the left, it's very interesting. I mean, the way that we handled it in the early 2010s with all those primaries and everything else is that you had a responsibility to govern, and we talked about that very specifically. Didn't apologize for it at all and knew people were going to come at you, but you had a responsibility to answer that forcefully with your perspective.
You see the exact opposite out of Chuck Schumer. Instead of doing the responsible thing, he knows better than to shut the government down. He knows the pain that that's going to cause, but he is more concerned about his politically left flank than he is about the health and well-being of the American people. That's a hell of a thing. I think the Democrats are in a terrible place.
They can't decide who's the leader of the party. Hakeem Jeffries is not in control. Chuck Schumer is not in control. Gavin thinks it could be him, but everyone's just talking about Mamdani. See, everyone keeps saying Trump's not on the ballot.
He wasn't in the off-year elections, a few teleconferences. But he's going to take the midterms like he's on the ballot. He's even talking about doing a convention leading up to the midterms in the summer. That's a great idea.
So to get momentum.
So he's going to put himself everywhere and he's going to make it his agenda. And I think that that's the mistake people keep saying he's not on the ballot. Get over it. Not yet. I agree.
Third year. It's pretty much all going to be at the primaries. I don't agree now. No, I agree. Because people understand what happens to an agenda becomes Impeachment City.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
So that's just it. And it's so. It's so agonizing either side. The Clinton stuff boomeranged on the Republicans. And I think the other stuff went after him on Ukraine, his ratings went up afterwards.
It's not going to stop him, I think, from if they get the House, and I think it's still a coin flip. from going after him and just trying to do investigations on Venezuela and ships and everything.
Well that's the thing that President Trump and his team understand is that their first term was short-circuited by all of us, right? A midterm in 2018 turned into constant investigations, impeachments, all of this. The ability to execute an agenda is nearly impossible. That's why he's all in. Quick question as we're with Josh and Smunk.
The Ruthless Podcast, what it's become, tell everyone how it started, and tell me what you thought about when you started getting some success and momentum. Smug, you want to start?
Well, it started during COVID. I mean, we had lockdowns going on, but we wanted to still hang out, so we would get on Zoom, we'd pour a couple of horses. We were all friends. All of us friends, and we'd bet on the ponies, because that was still open. And we said, you know what?
We're having a good time with this. This could be a show. We literally just, at the end of every day, we'd get on a Zoom call, pour a glass and bourbon, and bet on some horses because it was the only sporting event that was on television, and we would just talk. And at some point, it would. I don't even remember that.
Are you guys bettered by, were you betting on horses anyway? Not really? Who would think to do that? It's a COVID hobby, it's the only sport that's open. Yeah, that's literally what it was.
And then, you know, we started this thing, and I think initially it was basically a road test to see how this whole thing works. And we weren't experts by any stretch of the imagination. We started getting some listeners. It started with a niche audience of political operatives and people on Capitol Hill and things like that, where we thought the whole niche. In the marketplace, nobody was laughing about anything.
And in that era, really, nobody was laughing about stuff.
So we want to tell some jokes, try to lighten it up. Turns out, you know, other people wanted to do that. It ended up working out. And it is. And, Smokey, you still like each other?
Oh, could not be better friends. I mean, the thing is, is we can go, we can visit our friends in Congress. Every member of Congress listens to our show. We go across this country, we meet our fans, we take photos. It's incredible.
It's a great community.
Well, you deserve it. It's a very different line of work for you. It's a great show. Using your expertise on air and having a great time, and you got a chance to really get to know me, which is really underneath where you can't overspread.
Well, that was the best part of it. That's what some say. Yeah, some are saying. Guys, great to see you. Look up the Ruthless Podcast.
Get it everywhere. Watch it on YouTube. Thanks so much. Back in a moment. Great to see you guys.
It's Brian Kilmade. It's Will Kane Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday at Foxnews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.
