Episode Transcript
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Get ready to hear the truth about America
0:39
on a show that's not immune to the
0:41
facts. Back in February,
0:43
Donald Trump called into this conservative
0:46
radio program called the Dan
0:48
Bongino Show. President Donald
0:50
J. Trump. President Trump, welcome back to the show.
0:52
It's always good to have you, my friend. How
0:54
are you? Well, thank you,
0:56
Dan, very much. And for lack
0:58
of a better term, he threw down the
1:00
gauntlet. I don't think he's going to run, but
1:03
I'd like to go for immediately debates. I'd like
1:05
to debate him now because we should debate. Challenging
1:08
President Joe Biden to debate him, even
1:10
though Trump had skipped the GOP primary
1:12
debates. Oh, wow.
1:15
Look at that. We're breaking news,
1:17
Mr. President. Donald J. Trump
1:19
calls for debates against Joe Biden. That's great.
1:21
We can break the news here. We can
1:23
talk about these problems, Dan, and get him
1:25
to change his ways. But I am officially
1:27
doing that. I owe him for that. Eventually,
1:31
Biden accepted. And
1:34
he even upped the ante with a
1:36
campaign pushing the schedule of the matchup
1:38
earlier than most people expected. As
1:41
in tonight at a CNN
1:43
studio in Atlanta. And
1:45
while we can't know exactly what will happen on
1:47
stage, we've seen the show before.
1:50
Bitter insults, a constant
1:53
blame game, and more than
1:55
anything, a political spectacle that's
1:57
often judged on the optics more than the
1:59
facts. the substance. But
2:02
considering both candidates, offering radically
2:04
different visions for the country, it's
2:07
hard to imagine an election where
2:10
the substance matters more. So
2:13
today, there's no buzzer, no
2:16
mic muting, and instead,
2:19
just the policy. I
2:21
call four of my colleagues to talk
2:23
about what the candidates are actually promising for
2:26
a second term on some of
2:28
the issues Americans care the most about. From
2:32
the New York Times, I'm Estebb Herndon.
2:34
This is The Run-Up. Four
2:44
issues that usually rank high on the list
2:47
of voter concerns are the economy,
2:49
immigration, abortion rights, and
2:52
foreign policy. And that's where
2:54
I wanted to focus. Bidenomics is about
2:57
building an economy from the
2:59
middle out the bottom up, not the top
3:01
down. The minute Crooked Show
3:03
Biden shuffles out the door, I will
3:05
rapidly rebuild the greatest economy in the
3:07
history of the world. Look, we had
3:10
the greatest economy in history. Starting
3:13
with the economy. I'm
3:18
Jim Tankersley. I cover economic policy at the
3:20
White House for the Times in Washington. So
3:22
I call my colleague Jim Tankersley. Okay, I
3:24
wanted to get a sense of how Trump
3:27
and Biden differ on the economy in a
3:29
second. But I think first, it
3:31
would be helpful to get a sense of the
3:33
big picture. Where has the Biden administration been on
3:35
economic policy up until this point? Well,
3:38
I mean, I did it first off. I
3:40
think that the administration has a very coherent
3:42
economic strategy. They basically have had
3:44
to do two things. The first thing was they
3:46
had a strategy to try to finish the job
3:48
of recovering from the pandemic recession with
3:50
a big stimulus bill, which
3:53
they passed in 2021, and then they've
3:55
tried to do a whole bunch of
3:57
bills to kind of increase basically the
3:59
performance of the domestic economy. And they
4:01
are certainly frustrated that when we talk
4:04
about economic policy, we don't lead with
4:06
those attempts or with the fact that
4:08
economic growth has been faster under Biden
4:11
in his first three years as president than anyone
4:13
since Jimmy Carter. That does feel
4:15
like an important baseline. It is, it
4:17
is. But it's also true that the thing that
4:19
they get dinged most on is also a thing
4:21
that hasn't happened for decades for a president, which
4:23
is that Biden has presided over a period of
4:25
very high inflation and really
4:27
rapidly rising costs for American families. That
4:30
inflation rate peaked a couple of years
4:32
ago. It's been coming back down. But
4:34
it's still above historical norms. And
4:37
when the president is swimming upstream
4:40
on economic policy, that's the big
4:42
problem he is fighting against. People
4:44
have not liked the inflation
4:46
they've gotten along with his other policies.
4:48
And it's led them to overlook the
4:50
other effects of those policies on the
4:52
job market, where unemployment is very low,
4:55
on GDP growth, even
4:57
on people's wages, which are growing. But
4:59
people are just annoyed at how fast
5:01
prices are growing at the same time.
5:03
Yeah, that is the problem. And I
5:05
think that's a helpful articulation of it.
5:07
Can you give me a sense of
5:09
the policy differences that we might understand
5:11
between Biden and Trump on economic policy?
5:13
And we wanted to do that based
5:15
on three key areas, inflation, cost of
5:17
living, taxes, and jobs. What were the
5:19
major moves that Biden has done in
5:21
this term to try to address it?
5:23
And has he said anything about a
5:25
possibility of a second term and what
5:27
he would do differently? Yeah,
5:29
if you look at what Biden's done,
5:31
first off, just to really stipulate this,
5:34
inflation is the job of the Federal
5:36
Reserve far and away. But presidents can
5:38
influence, particularly at times like this, on
5:40
the margins inflation. So Biden has mentioned
5:42
a couple of things that he has
5:44
really been focused on now. And they're
5:47
smaller things in the broad scope of prices
5:49
across the economy. But they're little things that
5:52
he's trying to do to bring down prices.
5:54
He is focused really hard on passing and
5:56
signing legislation to allow the government to negotiate
5:58
prescription drug prices. bring down drug
6:00
prices. He has tried to both just
6:03
rhetorically go after and then also use
6:05
some levers of government to go after
6:07
companies for what he calls corporate greed,
6:10
excess profit margins. And he's targeted what
6:12
the White House loves to call junk
6:14
fees, which are like little cost increases
6:17
like on concert tickets, airline
6:19
tickets. And in the second term, I think there's
6:21
a couple of big things that he has said
6:23
that he would like to do that could affect
6:25
inflation. One of them is he wants
6:27
to raise taxes on people making more than $400,000 a year. But
6:30
he wants to do so in a way that would reduce
6:32
the budget deficit. And on
6:35
balance, that could have some small but
6:37
marginal effect on bringing down inflation. And
6:40
then the second thing he wants to
6:42
do is just kind of do more
6:44
with his antitrust corporate agenda in
6:46
a way that the White House argues will
6:48
help bring prices down. Neither of
6:50
those are large, but those are sort of the
6:52
cornerstones of his policies for bringing down
6:54
price growth, I would say, and are most
6:56
likely to affect inflation. Can
6:59
we get to what Trump has said, or particularly
7:01
on the issue of inflation? We know he is
7:03
blamed Biden for the current state of prices. But
7:05
what has he done while in office? And do
7:07
we have any clues of what Donald Trump would
7:09
do in regards to inflation if elected in the
7:11
second term? Yeah, I mean, I think
7:13
it's really important to note that Trump came to office
7:15
at a very different economic moment than Biden, right? Biden
7:18
had been low for basically
7:21
this entire century. And
7:23
that's important because one of the reasons why people are so
7:25
mad about it now is that they just aren't used to
7:27
it. You know, in the 70s and 80s, people got used
7:29
to higher inflation. They're not used to it now. So
7:32
Trump comes in, takes over an economy
7:34
with low amount of inflation, and then
7:36
he's able to do some economically stimulative
7:38
policies, a big tax cut. He calls
7:41
on the Federal Reserve to get stimulative
7:43
with their policies, too, which they do.
7:45
And Fed officials have been adamant that
7:47
they didn't respond to Trump. They just
7:49
did it because they thought they needed
7:51
to. But he gets both
7:53
stimulative monetary policy, stimulative fiscal policy, and
7:55
that helps to grow the economy. But
7:58
he's not really that worried about inflation because because people
8:00
are not expecting high inflation and it
8:02
stays pretty low until the
8:05
pandemic. So Trump's biggest argument, I
8:07
think, for like, I can bring back low inflation
8:10
is I did it before. But
8:12
it's a very different economic moment. And I
8:14
think we should just like start with that
8:16
knowledge that if you just came in and
8:18
reran Trump's playbook from four years ago, you'd
8:20
have really different effects. And that
8:22
could very well happen. He's talked about
8:24
a thing that Republicans talk about a lot,
8:26
which is like cutting unspecified government spending. In
8:29
theory, if you cut a lot of
8:31
government spending and reduce the deficit by a lot,
8:33
you could bring down inflation in the same way
8:35
that you could bring down inflation with tax increases
8:38
like Biden wants to do. But
8:40
I think the other big policy that Trump has talked
8:42
about that would affect prices, if
8:44
not the actual inflation rate is
8:46
tariffs. He wants to put new
8:48
taxes on imports from all around the world and
8:51
particularly on imports from China. And
8:53
that's just going to raise the cost of
8:55
those products for people. So in
8:57
Trump, you have this sort of rhetoric of I'm
8:59
going to cut government spending, I'm going to roll
9:01
back all the terrible Biden things that's going to
9:03
solve inflation and then I can do my own
9:05
thing. But I don't that's not really
9:07
adding up to what I think most economists would
9:09
call a coherent policy to bring down inflation. And
9:11
there's a lot of what Trump is talking about
9:14
that economists say really risks exacerbating more
9:16
inflation. Yeah, let's get to
9:18
the issue of taxes. What has Joe Biden done and
9:20
what does he promise he would do in the second
9:22
term, specifically when it comes to taxes? So
9:25
sort of like very counterintuitively, what Biden
9:27
has done thus far, if you add
9:29
all of his tax policies up, is
9:32
slightly cut taxes over the entirety of
9:34
his administration. But he wants to
9:36
raise a lot of taxes. That's
9:38
mostly reflective of the fact that he hasn't been able
9:41
to get Congress to go along
9:43
with the trillions of dollars in
9:45
corporate and high-earner tax increases that Biden
9:47
wants. He's campaigned for even back in
9:50
2020. Absolutely. I
9:52
mean, you know, the big tax
9:54
debate in this campaign is going to center
9:56
around the expiration of some tax cuts that
9:58
Trump signed into law. law in 2017. And
10:01
what Biden wants to do is keep
10:03
and extend the tax cuts for people
10:06
making less than $400,000 and
10:09
then allow to expire tax
10:11
cuts for people earning more than that and
10:13
some business tax cuts that are also set
10:15
to expire. And then on top of that,
10:18
raise more taxes on the rich and
10:20
on corporations. And that's sort of his
10:22
tax reform plan. Okay. Whereas Trump just
10:24
wants to make permanent all the tax cuts that he
10:26
signed in the first place. And he wants to go
10:28
farther. He wants to give more tax
10:30
cuts to corporations. He wants to give more
10:33
tax cuts to people. He even has floated
10:35
this idea of, gee, wouldn't it be nice
10:37
if we could just get rid of the
10:39
income tax entirely in this country and replace
10:41
it with tariffs, which has
10:44
a lot of problems as a way
10:47
to raise revenue, but is theoretically
10:49
possible and would be a
10:51
massive restructuring of our tax code. So there's
10:54
a really stark difference between these guys on
10:56
taxes. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, the
10:58
last bucket we had was jobs. As you
11:00
mentioned, this has been a period of job
11:03
growth led by Biden's administration. What should be
11:05
the biggest difference that we think about between
11:07
Biden and Trump when it comes to the
11:09
prospect of unemployment or employment, considering the unemployment
11:11
rate has been fairly low? I
11:14
think it's, you know, both these guys are going to talk
11:16
a big game about jobs. They're both going to talk about
11:18
their jobs record. Biden has the
11:20
best jobs record of any modern president in
11:22
large part because the recovery from covid employment
11:24
was so fast. But even if you exclude
11:26
that, it's been a very strong record. But
11:28
Trump had a strong jobs record, too. And
11:30
I think you have a real contrast in
11:33
how they kind of arrive at their belief
11:35
that they've been able to stimulate job growth
11:37
and how they say they would do it
11:39
going forward. You know, Trump is a he
11:42
talks in some very classic Republican language of
11:44
low taxes and low regulations are going
11:46
to drive job growth. But for Trump,
11:48
tariffs are also a driver of job growth.
11:50
He wants stuff made in the
11:52
United States with American jobs. And he thinks the way
11:54
to do it is basically to make everything you buy
11:57
from around the world more expensive so that we have
11:59
to make it here. Biden's doing some
12:01
of that, but he's doing more sort of like,
12:03
I want more stuff made here and I'm going
12:05
to subsidize it. Biden
12:07
has all these tax breaks in
12:09
the Inflation Reduction Act, all the
12:11
climate tax breaks for solar panel
12:13
production and wind turbines and hydrogen
12:16
and all these electric vehicles. And
12:18
he really wants to seed those
12:20
new industries here and to be
12:22
subsidizing those jobs. Trump would
12:24
repeal a bunch of those incentives, he
12:26
says. And so theoretically, that
12:28
would have some real potential effects on job growth.
12:30
But Trump has different policies, he says, would be
12:32
stimulative job growth. Again, because
12:35
it's such a different environment now than when either
12:37
of them took office, it's hard to say, oh,
12:39
yeah, that policy is definitely the right one to
12:41
go with. The bigger question, I think, if you're
12:43
a voter trying to judge the jobs thing is,
12:46
do I believe Joe Biden's
12:48
arguments that the jobs of the
12:50
future are in these particular industries,
12:53
advanced manufacturing, clean tech, electric vehicles.
12:55
If I do, Biden has a
12:57
real strategy for that. And Trump
13:00
very explicitly says we shouldn't be
13:02
targeting those. But if you believe,
13:04
hey, the jobs of the future just lie in
13:07
trying to bring American employment back
13:09
from overseas with tariffs and other end
13:12
tax cuts, then Trump is your
13:14
guy. Got it. I
13:16
guess I will ask as our last question, like, what
13:18
would be the one question on the economy you
13:20
would ask the two of them on Thursday? I
13:23
mean, I think you have to ask about
13:25
prices because it's the thing that people care
13:27
the most about. But I think you have
13:30
to ask about it in a way that
13:32
helps people understand what the choice is going
13:34
forward and not just blame game going back.
13:36
So I actually might start with a version
13:38
of your first question, one of your first
13:40
questions to me, which is what specifically will
13:42
you do in your
13:44
next term if you win in
13:47
November to bring down
13:49
inflation? And how will
13:51
that work? And then follow
13:53
up pretty aggressively. If Trump's just like, well, I
13:55
had low inflation before, I'll do
13:58
it again. Like, that's not an answer. Tell
14:00
me how and if Biden's just like well, I'm gonna
14:02
make sure the government gets insulin costs down more say
14:04
like okay great Well, what about the rest of the
14:06
costs? Yeah, and I think it's time for
14:08
a big national debate on what would be the right
14:10
policies over the next four
14:12
years to try to bring inflation down low
14:15
again because There are a lot
14:17
of ways that you could exacerbate it again If
14:19
you do a big tax cut or a big
14:21
spending increase without paying for it. There's a real
14:23
risk that it shoots up again Yeah, yeah
14:27
Jim thanks so much. I appreciate you taking some
14:29
time out and let's look to this debate with
14:31
an eye for substance fingers crossed Fingers
14:33
crossed man. Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun The
14:44
first and most urgent action when
14:46
we win will be the ceiling
14:48
of the border stopping the
14:51
invasion drill baby
14:53
drill Send Joe
14:55
Biden's illegal aliens back home
15:01
Two weeks ago I did
15:04
what republics in Congress refused to do I
15:06
took actions to secure our border That
15:08
included restricting unlawful crossings at our southern
15:11
border making decisions on asylum
15:13
more quickly and so much more
15:16
The next issue I wanted to turn to
15:18
was immigration My
15:25
name is Zolan Kano Youngs. I'm
15:27
a White House correspondent and I've
15:29
been covering immigration policy Over
15:31
the Biden and Trump administrations So you're gonna
15:33
help us understand the differences between Biden and
15:36
Trump specifically on an issue That
15:38
is at the top of mind for many
15:40
voters, which is immigration Can you take me
15:43
through just a couple of the pressure points
15:45
that are at this moment? top
15:47
of mind for the White House
15:50
Sure, sure. So I think when you
15:52
talk about how the White House views
15:55
the border There's one metric that has
15:57
stood out throughout the body administrations and
15:59
that's that's border crossings, right?
16:02
Now, border crossings have more than
16:04
doubled under Biden compared
16:07
to the Trump administration. And,
16:09
you know, there's a couple different factors for that,
16:11
but it's important to remember that at the end
16:13
of Trump, you know, the pandemic
16:16
essentially brought everything to a halt.
16:18
It also, you know, completely
16:20
deteriorated the economies in some of these
16:22
nations in Central America where many of
16:24
these people are coming from, plus you
16:26
had natural disasters, and then
16:29
as well a changing administration too. Interesting.
16:31
Let's try to go through the differences
16:33
between both candidates when it comes to
16:35
both border policy and broader
16:37
immigration policy. And let's start with President
16:39
Biden. What has he done in relationship
16:41
to the border and what is he
16:43
promising to do in a possible second
16:45
term? Right on. Okay, so
16:48
I think it's important to go back a
16:50
little bit to the presidential campaign of 2020.
16:53
Biden's largely kind of
16:55
the plans that he outlined for the border
16:58
was mainly attacking Trump for his policies.
17:00
And then he comes into office and
17:02
in those early months, there
17:05
were already signs of somewhat backtracking,
17:07
right? I mean, I remember during
17:09
the transition, he warned immigration advocates,
17:11
hey, it's gonna take me time
17:13
to lift these Trump-era restrictions, right?
17:16
And then we had, honestly, I would say
17:18
for much of this first term, at least
17:20
the first half, a reliance
17:23
on some Trump-era restrictions when it came to
17:25
the border. And
17:27
part of that was because the courts sort
17:29
of slowed down how much the Biden administration
17:31
could reform that system. But to simplify this, they
17:33
were relying on Trump-era restrictions, including a
17:36
COVID-era rule that essentially sealed the
17:38
border to migrants. So
17:40
the Biden administration went from demeaning kind of
17:42
Trump's policies on the border to embracing some
17:45
of them. That's right, embracing some of them.
17:47
I think what makes Biden a little bit
17:49
complicated at the border is he
17:51
may be incredibly sort of strict when
17:54
it comes to sort of traditionally people
17:56
crossing the border, that
18:01
allows migrants to apply for an
18:03
appointment with an immigration officer on
18:05
a smartphone app. He has
18:07
also relied on like this temporary emergency
18:10
program sort of known as parole to
18:12
let thousands of people into the country.
18:14
So on one hand you've got like
18:16
the restrictive sort of I'm turning people
18:19
away, but on the other hand you've
18:21
got this innovative approach to try and
18:23
expand some legal pathways, but
18:26
politics kind of always wins in
18:28
the end. And recently we did
18:30
see him issue an executive order
18:33
after getting derailed or blocked by the
18:35
Senate and just facing
18:37
political pressure for years. He
18:39
did issue an executive order
18:41
recently that essentially suspended asylum
18:44
to most migrants at the
18:46
Southwest border, largely mirroring the
18:48
Trump administration's attempt as well.
18:51
Is there anything the Biden administration has said about
18:53
what they would do differently if they elected to
18:55
a second term when it comes to the border?
18:58
You know, it's a little bit unclear as of
19:00
now kind of what the plans
19:02
would be for a second term. I'm
19:04
gonna be honest with you right now
19:06
the reporting really shows that they are
19:08
just so focused on trying to neutralize
19:11
sort of Trump's attacks that Biden is
19:13
an open border president which fueled into
19:16
some of these recent actions. But the
19:18
one glimpse that we have heard from
19:20
Biden even when he signed that recent
19:22
executive order limiting asylum, he acknowledged that
19:24
there would be critics in his own
19:26
party that want to see more actions
19:28
that support migrants and immigrants. And he
19:31
did say, give me time, be patient
19:33
with me. Yes, and to that point,
19:35
we saw a version of this in
19:37
the past week with a big announcement
19:39
for the White House announcing a change
19:41
in policy that would create a pathway
19:43
to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are
19:46
the spouses of citizens and who've already
19:48
been in the country for more than
19:50
10 years. Sure, so
19:52
this almost crystallizes Biden's approach to immigration
19:54
in a way. If you
19:56
are a migrant who is fleeing
20:00
persecution or poverty and is trying to cross
20:02
the border, Biden's essentially telling
20:04
you that you have to wait. And
20:07
if you are an undocumented family that
20:09
has been in the United States for
20:11
years working, sending your kid
20:13
to school, he's essentially saying
20:15
that you'll be protected for now.
20:18
And so it's that difference
20:20
between those coming outside the border and
20:22
those who have been inside the country
20:24
for years now. Okay. Well, let's go
20:26
through Trump. In his first term, what
20:29
were the specific actions that he took
20:31
to the border that stick out the
20:33
most? And what is he promising when
20:35
it comes to the border in a
20:37
possible second term? Yep. Yep. Okay. So
20:39
Trump definitely prioritized enforcement. And I would
20:41
say the main difference with Biden is
20:43
just was incredibly candid about the use
20:45
of deterrence and even cruelty at the
20:47
border as a means for
20:50
discouraging migrants to cross. I mean,
20:52
everyone knows about zero tolerance and
20:54
family separation, but there was a
20:56
lot of other stuff done in
20:59
the final two years of Trump,
21:01
even after this family separation policy
21:03
was lifted. Remain in Mexico might
21:05
be one of the more consequential
21:07
policies, essentially forcing migrants to wait
21:10
in Mexico until they get an
21:12
appointment in a backlogged immigration court
21:14
system. When COVID hit, they
21:16
basically seized on it to institute
21:19
something called Title 42, which essentially
21:21
turned migrants away citing a public
21:23
health emergency. But this also resulted
21:25
in them initially dropping off kids
21:27
who crossed the border alone into
21:30
Mexico, even if they were from a
21:32
Central American country. Right. That's
21:35
a major difference from even the way
21:37
the Biden administration used that rule. So
21:39
that was term one, essentially. So what
21:41
does he promise about what he would
21:44
do differently in the second term? Taking
21:46
it to the next level, completely. I
21:48
mean, if you thought it was extreme
21:51
in term one, I mean, me
21:53
and my colleagues have basically heard is
21:55
is it would it would impose an
21:57
even more severe level of sort of
22:00
extreme policies. I mean, one
22:02
thing that he talked about doing
22:04
in term one was citing the
22:06
Insurrection Act to basically have the
22:09
military police the border. That's
22:11
something that they are planning already
22:14
and his aides have
22:16
been very kind of candid about. He has,
22:19
you know, talked about reinstituting a lot
22:21
of the policies from
22:23
term one, including that COVID era rule,
22:26
but almost in a more permanent way
22:28
by not citing COVID, but by citing
22:30
other diseases such as tuberculosis or what
22:33
have you, even though there's still a
22:35
lack of data or
22:37
evidence that, you know, most of the migrants
22:39
crossing are sick. So we're talking about a
22:42
policy of escalation from Trump that will continue
22:44
what we saw in the first term, but
22:46
even kick it up to a different level.
22:48
What's the biggest difference between Biden and Trump
22:51
looking forward when it comes to the broader
22:53
immigration system? Yeah, so I think one thing
22:55
that sometimes gets lost about Trump is even
22:58
though a lot of the rhetoric was about
23:00
the border and illegal immigration,
23:02
he also limited and made attempts
23:04
to limit legal immigration. Yeah, this
23:06
is super important. Yeah, yeah. Like
23:08
one thing that I think that
23:10
the reporting shows is you would
23:12
see a return to extreme vetting.
23:14
People essentially go into an embassy
23:16
and going through a process to
23:18
try and get a visa to
23:20
the United States. Trump imposed a
23:23
bunch of extreme vetting from the
23:25
smallest detail to just sprawling sort
23:27
of policies, right? Maybe if you
23:29
left an answer blank on an
23:31
application, that might mean that you
23:33
need to start over now and
23:36
you need to basically provide more
23:38
paperwork and background that some people
23:40
fleeing difficult situations in
23:42
certain countries may not have. Extreme
23:44
vetting, critics would say, resulted in
23:47
an exacerbated backlog of the overall
23:49
system. Biden, when he
23:51
came into office, lifted those
23:54
extreme vetting policies. He lifted
23:56
other policies, including one that
23:58
basically said if you were
24:01
an immigrant likely to use
24:03
government assistance programs, think
24:05
like food stamps, for example, you could
24:08
have your green card blocked. And like,
24:10
make no mistake, the system's still incredibly
24:12
backlogged now. Democrats and Republicans would say
24:14
that it's, you know, still broken. But
24:16
there were some of those restrictions that
24:19
were lifted under Biden. You
24:21
asked me about also what it would look like in term
24:23
two for Trump. Once again, it may
24:25
not surprise you. Go into the
24:27
next level in terms of restrictions here. That
24:30
extreme vetting would be back. So it would
24:32
make it harder for people to apply the
24:34
quote unquote legal way or right way. And
24:37
you would also have a major
24:39
escalation of deportation strategy. Main
24:41
difference from Biden to Trump. Trump
24:43
basically directed ICE agents
24:46
to, I can casual terms
24:48
go after everybody, right? Don't
24:50
be limited if they're undocumented,
24:52
target them for deportation. Biden
24:54
instituted guidelines that basically said
24:56
focus on people with criminal
24:58
backgrounds. Being undocumented isn't a
25:00
reason enough for being deported,
25:03
essentially, or at least having the resources
25:05
of ICE go after you. Trump
25:07
is going to go back to that broad sort
25:10
of approach for ICE. But he also
25:12
in a term to we've
25:14
reported that they are planning on
25:16
creating mass detention facilities, including
25:19
getting federal officials to help with
25:21
deportations outside of ICE. Deputizing
25:23
local police to go after
25:26
undocumented immigrants. Also,
25:28
you know, churches, schools, which essentially under
25:30
the Biden administration have been sort of
25:32
safe zones. You know, let's
25:34
not go and send ICE agents into
25:37
schools or worksite raids. That
25:39
would all be on the table for Trump
25:42
administration as well. If you could sum it
25:44
up, what would you say is the
25:46
biggest difference between President Biden and the President Trump
25:48
on immigration? You know,
25:50
I think President Biden is
25:53
focusing on enforcement now, and
25:55
that's where sort of the political momentum is.
25:58
But this is still somebody that can. into
26:00
office and proposed a bill to establish a
26:02
pathway to citizenship for 11 million
26:05
undocumented immigrants. I do think this
26:07
is an administration that the
26:11
border has been a thorn in
26:13
their side, which has depleted
26:15
momentum from their, I think,
26:18
real intention to try and
26:20
repair the overall immigration system.
26:23
The border isn't a thorn in the
26:25
side for the Trump administration. It's something
26:28
that they're going to lean into. In
26:30
terms of basically hardening the overall borders
26:32
of the United States, Trump's goal
26:35
is going to be to limit the number
26:37
of people who can come to the United
26:39
States in a term two. And
26:41
I think Biden's focus
26:45
is hardening the
26:48
southwest border at this time
26:51
to hopefully build enough
26:53
momentum to start
26:55
to make incremental changes to
26:58
repair the overall system. Thank
27:03
you so much, Zolan. We appreciate your time and
27:05
we know you'll be tracking this. And we'll
27:08
check in on it again before the election. Right
27:10
on. Appreciate being here. After
27:19
the break, abortion rights and
27:21
foreign policy. Shopping
27:42
ingredients for New York Times cooking recipes
27:44
through Instacart is convenient and quick, perfect
27:47
for a home cooked steak dinner for your date
27:49
in an hour. But plot
27:51
twist. They're vegetarian.
27:54
You open New York Times cooking and
27:56
find just the thing. Halloumi with corn,
27:58
cherry tomatoes, and basil. at
38:00
the very end of May and said it
38:02
was an Israeli proposal, which it was, although
38:04
the United States helped push
38:06
it along. His problem
38:08
is that just this past weekend,
38:11
Netanyahu himself stood up and seemed
38:14
to walk away from some big
38:16
principles of what was supposed to
38:18
be the proposal that he and
38:20
his War Cabinet approved. The result
38:22
is Biden goes into this
38:25
debate, finding himself in
38:28
the perfectly middle spot where
38:30
people are angry at him
38:32
at both ends. A
38:34
very pro-Israel, let the Israelis do whatever
38:36
they want, are coming after him and
38:39
saying, you're not supporting Israel enough. And
38:41
the left is saying, you're not restraining the
38:44
Israelis from killing civilians and you have the
38:46
blood on their hands. As
38:48
you mentioned, President Biden has kind
38:50
of increasingly sharpened his criticisms of
38:52
the Netanyahu government in an attempt
38:54
to hold them, I guess, more
38:57
verbally or rhetorically accountable. How successful
38:59
has it been considering, you know,
39:01
you're talking about a walk
39:03
back just as recently as this weekend? So
39:06
most of what he was doing with
39:08
Netanyahu was behind the scenes because
39:11
it's very much in Joe
39:13
Biden's DNA that you work
39:15
out these kind of agreements,
39:17
particularly on delicate national security
39:19
issues, quietly between leaders. He
39:22
got more and more angry at Netanyahu
39:24
and Netanyahu more and more angry at
39:26
him. It's pretty clear who
39:28
Netanyahu wants to win in this
39:31
coming election. Netanyahu
39:33
wants Donald Trump to be
39:36
elected president again because it was
39:38
a very rare day that Donald
39:41
Trump stood in his way. That's
39:43
where I'm going next. Yeah. If
39:46
that's President Biden's relationship to Israel
39:48
and Gaza, what do we know
39:50
about Donald Trump? What has he
39:52
said? And more importantly, do
39:54
we know anything about how a
39:56
potential Trump administration would change their
39:59
their relationship to government or conflict
40:01
if he were to win in
40:03
November. Trump
40:05
has said very little about
40:07
Gaza. He initially hinted that
40:09
he would be completely behind Netanyahu,
40:12
but at various moments he has said,
40:14
well, maybe the Israelis have gone a
40:16
little bit far. But
40:18
he gets away with a huge
40:21
amount of vague statements.
40:23
This is the usual arm waving of the
40:26
Trump presidency. So we don't
40:28
know for sure, but what we can work
40:31
from is what happened during his term in
40:34
office from 2017 to 2021. Pretty
40:38
much he allowed Netanyahu to do what
40:40
he wanted to do, but he also
40:43
was responsible mostly through his
40:45
sudden law and a
40:47
team that was working around him for
40:50
the Abraham Accords, which began to
40:52
bring Arab states into
40:55
an actual
40:58
recognition and peaceful resolution
41:01
with the Israelis. Biden
41:04
was trying to build on that before
41:06
the October 7th attacks and still is
41:08
by trying to bring in
41:10
the biggest element of this, which would
41:12
be Saudi Arabia. So
41:14
to be clear, though, if you
41:16
are a voter right now who is
41:19
upset with the current situation in Gaza
41:21
and believes that Biden has empowered Netanyahu
41:23
on an offensive assault that has killed
41:25
too many Palestinian civilians, there is not
41:28
evidence that Donald Trump as
41:30
president would curb those
41:32
actions. In fact, quite to the contrary, he
41:35
would probably undo the few things that Biden
41:37
has done in that regard. I
41:39
was just wanting to be clear. I mean, it seems like the
41:42
Netanyahu interest is one that
41:44
tells all we need to know. I also
41:46
wanted to talk to you about the
41:48
policy differences between Biden and Trump when
41:51
it comes to Ukraine. Obviously, this conflict
41:53
has engulfed a lot of the political
41:55
conversation in the lead up to this
41:57
presidential election year, but it also shows
41:59
the
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