Monday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon discuss the “Big, Beautiful Bill” finally passing in the Senate by the skin of its teeth, President Trump’s public feuds with the richest man in the world and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Democratic Party’s new summer strategy, Secretary Rubio formally shutting down USAID, and a new report on LGBT activists taking advantage of public libraries to reach children. *** First, the “Big, Beautiful” bill finally passed the Senate today, with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance. Now, it heads back to the House before landing on the president’s desk. Can it go all the way? “They literally had no votes to spare… and they had to do a deal with Lisa Murkowski,” Bevan said. “This whole thing has been a total high-wire act. There is no plan B. There’s no fallback. It’s this or disaster. That’s helped this thing get through thus far by the skin of its teeth.” “Trump wanted this by July 4, and he’s not going to get that. What he’s going to get is a vote in the House next Wednesday,” Cannon added. “We always talk about the party ‘in power,’ but you’ve got a three-vote margin in the Senate, a half-dozen in the House. What happens in these situations is the most extreme members of the in-power party collude with every member of the opposition party. And then you get chaos.” *** After that, around minute 7, Elon Musk is back, after a few weeks off from political discourse, to post that he would fund a new third party — the America Party — if the “Big, Beautiful” bill becomes law. “Trump turned around today and said this is not a game Elon wants to play,” Bevan explained. “He said he could sic DOGE on Musk, the most subsidized person in America, and if we cut those subsidies, he might have to go back to South Africa. No more rocket launches, no more cars. So it’s gotten pretty personal, pretty quickly.” “Is he off his meds?” Cannon wondered. “What I don’t understand is, what’s his beef? What’s his specific complaint about the bill? Is he a newfound deficit hawk? Is it what Trump says, that he’s not getting the subsidies for renewables? Why is he so dead set against this bill?” “This is the greatest reality show of all time,” Bevan marveled. *** In the next segment, at minute 11, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell responded today to an open request from the White House to lower interest rates, telling an economic conference that he would have if not for the uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs. Is Trump trying to get this guy to quit? “We all assumed he was worried inflation hadn’t been tamed, and that if he cut rates too much, it could bring back inflation,” Cannon explained. “But today he said something a little different. He was basically saying he thinks tariffs are inflationary. But so far, they haven’t been.” “There’s talk of firing him, though I’m not sure Trump has the authority to do that. The media and Democrats would go nuts-because the Fed is supposed to be independent,” Bevan said. “Right now, Trump is just attacking him publicly, and Powell is holding his ground and pushing back a little.” *** And then, at minute 17, the Democratic National Committee announced a plan for an “organizing summer” which aims to register voters and “equip volunteers to authentically enter conversations in non-political spaces.” “I hate to tell them, but it’s already July 4th weekend. If you’re going to organize for summer, you might want to start earlier. It’s like waiting until after high school graduation to look for a summer job,” Andrew Walworth joked. “It’s all so contrived-like they’re going to authentically talk about politics in these spaces. It’s just gobbledegook,” Bevan commented. “Anyone who uses the word authentic-we know it’s inauthentic,” Walworth added. Cannon concluded: “If you can’t fake authenticity, what can you fake?” *** In the next segment, starting at minute 21:30, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the final closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today, and plans to cut 15% off the State Department on top of that, as RCP’s Susan Crabtree reports. Bevan commented: “There was just so much excess. As Rubio said, it became almost like an independent charitable organization that didn’t report to anyone and wasn’t accountable. They were spending billions of dollars.” “I’ve been writing about this for years and didn’t even know that most of the money going to these ‘non-governmental organizations’-NGOs-was actually coming from the U.S. government,” Cannon added. “I assumed they were charitable organizations, but if it’s government money laundered through them, then they’re not non-governmental. They’re governmental agencies without congressional oversight.” *** Finally, at minute 33, RCP contributor Maggie Miller talks with RealClearInvestigations writer John Murawski about his latest expose looking into how public libraries have moved beyond celebrations of LGBTQ identity for “Pride Month” to include sexually explicit content, radical gender ideology, and overt political messaging-even aimed at very young children. “If you think this is just about gay pride-it’s actually about everything short of bestiality and pedophilia.” “I went to eight libraries in the Wake County system in North Carolina, which includes Raleigh and nearby towns. That’s a third of the total system. And what I saw was a pattern of advocacy for the overthrow of Western civilization,” he asked. “Capitalism, marriage, heterosexuality, and Christianity are all lumped together as oppressive ideologies imposed upon the world by white Westerners. Liberation means breaking those chains.” “The claim is, we’re no longer bound by gender binaries and return to how we’re ‘naturally’ meant to live — queer — not sexually repressed, but sexually exuberant. That’s what nature intended. That’s the philosophy found in these books.” “I personally have no problem with libraries having these books on the shelves. The problem is how they display them-on tables at the library entrance, festooned with pride flags and flags for every identity: polyamory, bisexual, demisexual, asexual, polysexual, pangender. They’re officially promoting these ideas,” he said. “Government agents are promoting these things. And most of the books are for kids.” *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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