Thursday 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 — Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Walworth start the show with a discussion of the murder of a Jewish couple last night outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The suspect is reportedly a 30-year-old Chicagoan who yelled “free, free Palestine” as he was arrested. “This young woman was born in Kansas City, she’s an American. She’s Jewish, not Israeli,” Cannon said about one of the victims. “These people were killed because they’re Jewish, on our soil, by some person who was radicalized in America.” “I blame these college professors who teach these kids that a genocide is taking place; they never stop using that word,” he said. “These are tenured professors who have been teaching Americans toxic lies for a generation.” “That is what the Trump administration says it’s trying to do, but the view there is academic freedom. This is the debate we’ve been having. These institutions have failed to reform themselves,” Tom Bevan commented. *** After that, starting at minute 7, Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill finally passed in the House last night — by a single vote — and it’s now headed to the Senate. “We could talk about all the ins and outs if and when it passes in the Senate and becomes law,” Cannon said. “If you actually cared about fiscal responsibility, you’d do all the cuts on the poor and none of the tax breaks on the wealthy, and you’d still be in a deficit. It made me realize nobody even gives lip service anymore to a balanced budget.” “The margins in the House are so small that the folks who want to stand on principle are going to end up basically giving Democrats a victory,” Bevan said. “This is Trump’s entire legislative agenda, he’s got nothing else. If this doesn’t go forward, then imagine the headlines, imagine the glee on the part of the Democrats.” *** In the next segment, starting at timestamp 13:30, they discuss Elon Musk’s announcement that he is going to spend less time and money on politics and more on running his companies. “Tesla’s stock tanked, but just announcing he’s going back put it back up,” Carl Cannon commented. “DOGE ran into some problems.” “It was always part of the plan for him to go back,” Walworth noted. *** Plus, starting at minute 23, the gang speculates about what roles Hunter and Jill Biden played in running the Biden White House. Jake Tapper’s new book suggests Hunter “was almost like a chief of staff for the family.” “Jake Tapper is talking like he just discovered this or that we didn’t know Jill Biden was one of the driving forces for this entire drama,” Tom Bevan said. “For those of us who were paying attention, it’s not news.” “Joe Biden did all these pardons, a lot of them by auto-pen, like 2,000 of them. So I wonder if Hunter Biden was functioning as basically a White House chief of staff… Did Hunter Biden actually pardon himself?” *** Next, starting at minute 28, RCP contributor Richard Porter joins Tom Bevan for a deep dive on President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation package, which passed in the House by a single vote overnight. “This is the opening bell for the midterm elections. This bill encompasses really the entire scope of Trump’s economic policy agenda,” Porter said. “Every single Democrat lined up against the waitress at the corner diner and said she ought to be paying taxes on her tips.” “In states like Illinois, where two Democratic members of Congress are running for an open Senate seat, they’re going to have to run defending a vote that would have increased taxes significantly.” “There are 13 congressional districts where Donald Trump won, and the seats are controlled by Democrats. You can bet this vote will be central to the Trump campaign’s focus on winning more seats in the midterm election,” he said. *** Finally, starting at timestamp 36:45, Carl Cannon talks to Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell, founder of the Election Integrity Network, about issues that could affect the 2026 midterms, how “judge shopping” works, and President Trump’s clashes with the judiciary over his executive orders. “I think there’s a real problem in the judicial branch of government because they tend to come from the same schools, have the same mind frame, and it’s not a conservative mind frame, and it’s certainly not a MAGA mind frame,” she said. “It’s a very dangerous constitutional predicament that we’re in, because the inferior courts were supposed to be the least important branch. The only court that’s mentioned in the Constitution is the Supreme Court. Congress has plenary authority to determine the jurisdiction, the makeup, the composition, the rules-everything-for the inferior courts: the district courts, the appellate courts.” “I think we’re headed for serious constitutional issues when you have an unelected-supposed to be the least important branch-dictating to the President of the United States and the entire executive branch how to conduct business. That isn’t what our founders intended,” she said. *** 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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