Springtime Strategies: Congressman Tom McClintock on Economic Optimism and the Road Ahead

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So go to ghostbed.com slash just news and use the promo code just news. One more time. Ghost bed.com slash just news promo code just news. Hello America. Happy Saturday. What a beautiful spring day around America. The temperature is starting to warm. The grass is getting greener. The trees are filling out. The flowers are starting to pop up. I saw some tulips popping up in my garden. Cherry blossoms already blossomed and done now. The trees are fully green here in Washington. A time of rejuvenation and revival, time of faith coming out of the Easter season and Easter holiday. Although in the Byzantine world, that is just being celebrated now in Russian Ukraine. In fact, a temporary peace arrangement there. A couple of days of ceasefire to celebrate Easter on both sides of the war. A tiny piece of compassion and an otherwise violent four-year conflict. We got a great show for you, Tate. And I want to get us on the road to that really quick. I'm really excited about it. Kicking us off in the first spot. Congressman Tom McClintock of California. I want to bring him on because he and I have a different optimism than a lot of conservatives and Republicans have about the 2026 election when it comes to how MAGA, Trump, Republicans can perform. I actually think the economy, assuming that the Iran war gets wrapped up, is going to be improving and it's going to look a lot like the Reagan morning in America elections where the Republicans against the odds picked up House and Senate seats. There's just so many signs that the economy, once the temporary inflation of the war, once the uncertainty of the war in Iran clicks down. Just imagine if we got Venezuela resolved. Iran gets resolved in some way by peace or by blockade or by whatever. And Cuba moves and transitions towards a more friendly American relationship. And the economy takes off with all of those tax money that we're now people are now getting back with their tax returns coming in. I think Congressman McClintock thinks that's a dynamic that a lot of people in the media, the pollsters aren't thinking about. And I think that's really important to weigh in a net. In the second block of show, I teased this last night in the show. I want you to listen. It's a really important conversation. We remember the censorship that occurred first when I wrote her first stories about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden firing that prosecutor saying, you're not getting the billion dollars. And son of a bee, they fired the prosecutor that was investigating my son. You remember all that, right? Well, I got censored then. They would call it a conspiracy theorist. And then the laptop came out, compliments of random divine. She got censored. And then we blew up the censorship. We exposed it and the Twitter files came out and Mike Benz reporting and Greg Piper's reporting here at Just News. And we broke some really big news. And then we thought, well, we got this concrete. We're back and free speech has been a lot better. True social is giving us a platform. X became Elon Musk and free speech is a lot more robust today. But guess what? The Empower oversight whistleblower center and the producer they hired to make a movie about the Hunter Biden scandal in the eyes or through the eyes of those IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shaplie and Joe Ziegler. They've been experiencing some censorship on Facebook. They're going to explain that in the next round of this conference, the second block of the show. And the third block of the show, we're going to talk to the Iranian resistance. Remember the idea I floated to yesterday that maybe President Trump doesn't blow the smithereens out of Iran. First, he tried the naval blockade, the out blockades, Iran's blockade of the Hormuz Strait, meaning Iran can't get anything in or out and they can't fly it out. They ain't got an air force anymore. Ali Raza, Jafar Zida of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, one of the main resistance groups in Iran. He's going to talk about that. And then the final block, and by the way, I think you hear Congressman McClintock talk about that Iranian resistance group. So the National Council of Resistance of Iran is tied to the M.E.K. resistance group in Iran. I think Congressman McClintock thinks that they could be a major player in some phase of the Iran conflict when it gets time for regime change. We'll ask Ali Raza, Jafar Zida about that. And then the final block, I've known him for 30 years. I've watched his work. He made being a tax cutter fashionable. He made thousands of political candidates sign a tax pledge to never raise taxes. Americans for tax reforms founder Grover Norquist, one of the great tax fighters in America. He's, by the way, I know we haven't done, President Trump got a big tax cut through in the big, beautiful bill. No tax on tips, no tax on social security. Got all that. But there's a bigger movement to reduce taxes at the state level. Property taxes and state income taxes. Grover's at the forefront of that. He's going to give you an update. It's actually an incredible number of states like six or seven more have joined the income tax reduction movement or the property tax reduction movement. He's going to bring up the speed in the fourth block of the show. Now, before we get to that, a quick shout out. You're, it's one of our great friends here. You know, I love Native Path. You just heard last night from my good friend at Native Path, Dr. Chad Walding. I want to remind people this, and this is important because collagen is a part of my routine now. And it's part of many of my family members. In fact, my mom, before she died, God bless her. I miss her so much now, but she was taking it in much of the pain that she had for years from her replaced tip in her back. It went away. 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Go check it out one more time. Getnativepath.com slash justnews. Back in a second with Congressman Tom McCuntick, one of my favorite interviews in Congress. Hey folks, this episode is brought to you by NativePath, grass-fed collagen for better bones, joints, skin, hair, and nails. Here's something that genuinely surprised me. Calcium supplements, the ones millions of people take for bone health, may not be doing much at all because bones are 90% collagen, not calcium. Without the collagen scaffold to attach to, calcium has nowhere to go. That's where today's sponsor comes in. After 30, our bodies produce 1-2% less collagen every single year. That's the protein that keeps our bones dense, our joints cushioned, and our skin firm. By 60, most people like me have lost half of their collagen, and it's nearly impossible to get it back through diet alone because it lives in the parts of the animal we usually don't eat, the bones, the cartilage, and the tendons. 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He is one of the most influential members on the House Judiciary Committee and so many other committees joining me right now from the great state of California. Congressman Tom McClinty. Sir, good to have you on the show. It's great to be back, John. Thanks for having me. I wish we could say that it's still the great state of California. It used to be. It can be again, but unfortunately, we've got some idiots to get out of office and some idiotic policies to change before we can get back to those golden days of yours. Yeah, you're exactly right. It's almost hard to believe what Reagan's California has become under the new Samara, but the flight out of the state is so dramatic. Now, all those leftist billionaires that love leftist policies until it's applied to them, they're fleeing too. Is this a moment? Is this election a potential where maybe the California electorate throws a turmoil? I hope so. I mean, California is in a negative feedback loop. We had an out migration, net out migration of about one and a half million people since Moussin took office, meaning one and a half million more people have moved out of California than have moved in. And more than a two to one margin, it's Republicans who are leaving. And I've said for years that the California Republicans are still winning the vote. The problem is that people are now voting with their feet. So the more Republicans leave, the worse things get, the worse things get, the more Republicans leave. But this policies now have gotten so bad and are having such an enormously negative impact on the quality of life here. And you can see that in the census data. Either those remaining in California are going to have to wise up, or we're simply going to become one gigantic Detroit with better weather. And before the rest of the country sneers at us, just remember that there are 49 other states we Californians can move to when things get bad enough. And many of us already have. Where do we move if they take over our country? Yeah, that's exactly the issue that every voter has to think about in November 26, because the Democrats are going to double down on the very things that they got thrown out of office in 24. In fact, they're more overt about it, more impeachments, more open borders, more violence, more letting criminals on the street, more ruining the economy. I am actually, I see a lot of conservatives walking around right now, they're kind of mopey and they're kind of boy, we're going to get our butt whooped in the November elections. I actually don't see that when I look into the polling data. I actually think that, particularly with an economic curve that turns up in the summer and fall, which it certainly looks like it will do. This will be a more optimistic election for conservatives and they realize, and then they're also going to have some benefits, right? They're probably going to win, conservatives probably going to win the Mississippi and Louisiana Supreme Court cases, which take away some of the tactics that the left has used on racially gerrymandered districts and voting for weeks after election day. How are you? You always are an optimist, but your optimism is rooted in a lot of common sense. How do you look at the next six months heading into November? Well, I just remember the Reagan recovery. When those tax cuts had actually worked their way through the economy, they had a major effect on people's lives. You could feel it in the air, everybody was optimistic and happy again, and Reagan started running those commercials. It's morning in America everybody who is alive in those days remembers those commercials because they spoke exactly to how everybody was feeling. Well, the big beautiful bill are all the tax cuts and the regulatory relief and the other reforms in that. That's Reaganomics on steroids and you're starting to see that now work its way into the economy. I think people are going to be feeling it in their lives graphically by summer. I think it's going to be an entirely different political mood then. And I think the two questions that are going to dominate the midterms, are you better off today than you were two years ago? And I think by summer, we're not there yet, but by summer people will be saying, yeah, I'm feeling a lot better about things. And number two, do you really want to bring the Democrats back and reopen the borders? And the answer to that question should be self-evident. Yeah, no, it's an 80-90% issue now. No doubt about it. And there's no one that wants to go back. So it seems to me the war will also almost certainly, the military operation, not really a war, it's a military operation, a long-term military operation, and I'm Ron. That almost looks like it has one or two ways it will go. Either we'll get a deal this weekend with the vice president sitting at the table, which is pretty high-level negotiations, pretty serious where America is, or the president's going to take some sort of big action against them. I actually think rather than resuming bombs, there's a more bigger likelihood that he's going to blockade the Hermos and cut off the economy and literally bring the Iranian economy to dust. But if he has to for a little bit and then Iran collapses in some form, that's in the rear-view window and there's a win going into the fall as the economy is approving. That's probably the best case scenario for Republicans, right? Well, it has to end with the eradication of this regime and the great sort of Hormuz we opened under international control. My concern is we're running out of time to complete this under the War Powers Act, and I'm very concerned about a two-week delay in bringing this about. We've already critically weakened that regime. We've destroyed 150 Iranian warships. We've destroyed their air force. We've degraded their military, their missile capability by about two-thirds. We've destroyed their weapons manufacture. We've removed layer after layer leadership. And remember, there is a massive pent-up resistance within Iran. I mean, just one of the groups, M.E.K. alone says that they've got 20,000 organized resistance cells in all 31 provinces. And then you've got many other groups, including the Kurdish militia, the monarchists under Pallavi. They have to be armed and supported to bring down this regime. And I think they're just waiting for that hour of redemption to occur. And the sooner we can bring that about, the better. Yeah, no, that's the permanent solution. And you see in the polling, Scott Rasmussen has a fantastic poll out today. He measures things that the legacy media don't ever want to measure, because it would uproot their narrative. But majority of Americans, strong majority of Americans, want President Trump to make sure it's more important for them that he make sure Iran never get nuclear weapons than to just suddenly end the war without that being resolved. That shows the American people are on board with the president's number one priority here. That's something that doesn't get reported a lot. But that's something that puts a little bit of wind in the cells, right? Oh, I think so. And again, people can see very clearly, the threat that a nuclear Iran would expose the world to. They've made it very clear from the outset they intend to acquire nuclear weapons and once acquired to use them. We now know they have the ballistic capability of sending those bombs into every European capital. And that's what, that's the entire objective of this radical idiotic theocracy. They believe that a global war will bring about a global Islamic regime. That's what they're after. These people are out of their minds. And the only way to deal with them is to remove them from power. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's so important. And the American people get it. It's so funny. They might get a fat, a steady diet of anti Trump, anti conservative news, but they still get it. They don't they don't pay attention to it a lot of it now, which is amazing to see that discernment. When Congress comes back, a lot of important issues on the front burner. One of those, how do we continue to protect innocent Americans from abusive surveillance or like what occurred under the Obama and Biden eras? Section 702 renewal coming up. What is the current dynamic from my look? It looks like they're going to renew it for year and see how the reforms of last year work. Are there other options on the table? What are you looking for? No, I think your observations absolutely right. They'll extend it for 18 months. The reforms have had a major impact on bringing down abuses. The number of inquiries has dropped dramatically. The number of people who have access to these searches has dropped dramatically. And to me, one of the one of the deciding factors, and again, I believe you want to search through my stuff, you got to get a warrant and my data records, even if it's just an index and not not actual content, that's still my stuff. You need a warrant. But they've done a great deal to separate out American citizens from foreign nationals. And to me, what was decisive was the president saying, look, nobody has been harmed by the abuse of these powers more than I have. But I'm telling you, as president, 70% of my daily intelligence briefings are coming from the legitimate 702 information. And particularly in this period of history, we should not be blinding ourselves to what's going on. So I'm willing, again, I've been a strong opponent of 702 and FISA in general. But I'm not going to get in the president's way on this. He says he needs it. Again, he's right. Nobody's been harmed more by the abuses than he has. I'll support him for these next 18 months. Hopefully, we'll then be in quieter, safer times, and we can have a more rational discussion about where that dividing line is under the Fourth Amendment. You always are on the front end of, I think, the more important issues, the common sense issues that often get kicked around to the side in Washington while we debate things that don't matter a lot. As this war was unfolding and the oil supplies were getting tighter, the president waived the Jones Act for 60 days, which gives a little bit more freedom of these oil ships to get through and make deliveries and bring down prices and keep supply running. You have a long-term bill to get rid of the Jones Act. A lot of people have always scratched their head, why do we have this lack of freedom on the waterways? Talk a little bit about that and what may just happen on your bill, which is very important. The Jones Act is a protectionist law that was passed in 1920. It requires that shipping between US ports has to be done on US-built and owned ships that are crewed mostly by Americans. That increases shipping costs within the United States dramatically, especially between Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, that rely on American shipping just to participate in the US economy. A US-built tanker, for example, is nearly four times more expensive as a foreign built ship. Because it's protected from international competition, US shippers can then charge whatever the market would bear. This is bad if you live in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Hawaii imports significant portions of their oil from Russia, not subject to the Jones Act. When Russia shuts off supply, their transport costs will go through the roof and Hawaiian consumers pay the higher prices of the pump just as a penalty for being American. That's why Hawaii and Puerto Rico imports so much Russian crude. It's cheaper than shipping American crude. It also makes it prohibitively expensive to move oil around the country, like from an American production field in Alaska to an American refinery in California. We still have, I think, six or seven left. Since there are no domestic LNG tankers, LNG simply doesn't move between US ports except by barge. Yeah, it's a real limitation right now. Boy, this 60-day waiver will help a lot, but fixing it long term and creating some freedom on the waterways probably will have a long-term, launch larger benefit on the cost of energy and other items that move through. One last thing, because I've been in this town a long time and it's almost as long as I've been a reporter on any day of any given week. I could find another fraud that occurred in the government right about it. It's been so rampant for so long, but in the last several months with Minnesota, now California, and now a new assistant attorney general whose job is dedicated to rooting out fraud, and then the House just passed the most, I think one of the most common sense laws. It's amazing that it wasn't on the books before, deporting Fraudsters Act of 2026. There's been a pretty significant dent put into the industrial complex of fraud. How important is that and what are some of the next steps we need to take to keep tightening up the stealing of our money? Well, the bill itself simply says if you're a guest in our country and you're reporting our government, you need to go home. And we got that off the House floor. It's in the Senate now, posed by Democrats, supported by Republicans. A common story. But the bigger issue is this kleptocracy that has developed within mainly these blue states like Minnesota and California. And it's not just communities like the Somali community in Minnesota. That's a huge part of the problem there. But it clearly is developed not only just under the nose of these Democratic administrations. They've actually been aware of it and haven't done anything. I mean, we've got audio tape from Keith Ellison, the Democratic Attorney General in Minnesota, where he's meeting with these fraudsters and they're telling each other they have each other's backs. We've got whistleblowers that say this was brought to the attention of Tim Walz. He completely ignored it. TSA agents who were seeing this cash being set up to Somalia in carry on luggage reported that to the Biden administration, they did absolutely nothing. Well, this administration is now bringing to bear the full weight of the Department of Justice against these fraudsters. We're seeing it now in California. Newsom has been bragging that, well, he shut down four fraudulent hospices in the last four years. Well, Department of Justice just shut down 231 overnight here in California because of the huge amount of just ridiculous fraud that's been going on. We're not talking thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars. We're talking about billions of dollars stolen from the American people. Yeah, no doubt about it. And it was going on. They've been shamed into it. I think the only way you can look at Banta's indictments yesterday was imitation is the greatest form of flattery because they were just catching up to a little of what the federal government has done over these last few months and cracking down on it. And the fact is that there were warnings of flags flying all over the place and they ignored them until it became a political liability. Until then, I think it was a political benefit for them because, again, they were getting in Minnesota anyway, lots of contributions from the fraudsters and quite brazenly in exchange for protection from prosecution. I had one of the Minnesota state workers, lifelong cop, and then became a financial investigator who was on the show yesterday and he said, I first discovered the fraud that was going on in hospice and in childcare in 2013. For 13 years, every time I tried to do something to stop it, to prosecute it, I would get the same answer, which is we, the Democratic leaders of the state of Minnesota, can't afford to buck the Somali community. They're too important to us politically. So they were willing to trade billions of dollars of fraud just to keep that political clout. His story was stunning to hear him, just so demoralizing to hear. Really, really is. Well, we do have some reforms in the big, beautiful bill that are going to require much more frequent eligibility checks. That's going to be a continuing benefit to suppressing fraud, but we're not going to get rid of that fraud until we have prosecuted and put in jail everybody who has defrauded the American people. And for that matter, everybody who has corruptly allowed them to do that. Yeah, that's such an important point. They had enablers all through the system, and that really harmed the interest of the American taxpayer big time. Congressman, it's always a joy to talk to you on the phone. I love when you call in and do the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Have a great weekend. John, thanks so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. You too. Yeah, thank you, sir. What a great conversation. All right, folks, don't go anywhere. A story of troubling censorship. Yeah, we've put it on its backheels, but censorship is not yet dead. Tristan Levitt from the Empower Oversight Whistleblower Center and producer, Christaage, will talk to some talk to us about and reveal some of the resistance they've run into in trying to produce a new movie about Hunter Biden. Can you imagine more Hunter Biden censorship in the IRS whistleblowers that next after the commercial break? All right, folks, it's springtime. You know it, right? The grass is starting to go greener. The flowers are starting to pop out of the ground. You're pulling up some weeds are ready and getting ready to get a good summer in our great time ahead of us in order. Well, that's also a time when I start to look and update my insurance portfolio, protecting my family and finding the right insurance policy is important. And what I want is it to be straightforward. And that's a top priority for me. Policy Genius makes it easier to do so. Policy Genius is an online insurance marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side, totally for free. Their license team helps you get what you need fast so you can work on your life, easily find what you need, coverage amounts, prices, terms, no guesswork, just clarity, simple clarity. Policy Genius helps you find your most affordable policy that meets your needs. 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It tells the inside story of the Hunter Biden tax investigation through the voices of Gary Shapley and his fellow workers who were whistleblowers who risked everything to expose that scandal. Joining us now to talk about it, two of the men behind that documentary in Power Oversight, President Tristan Levin and Chris Dodge, the founder of fruition predictions who's helping make that movie. Tristan, Chris, great to have you on the show. Well, thanks for having us, John. Appreciate it. All right, we all know, and a trip down memory lane, that the Hunter Biden story started with a lot of censorship, my reporting in 2019 censored in part by the work of the whistleblower who tried to fake whistleblower who tried to suggest that the Hunter Biden story wasn't true. Then Miranda's work, Miranda Devine's work on the laptop censored again back in the 2020 election. You guys are trying to get this movie out. And if I understand Tristan, you've run into a little bit of censorship on social media all over again. That's right. So this is a film that is mostly completed in terms of the interviews, but there is a campaign that we launched several weeks ago to raise the money to finish the production of the film, which Chris Dodge has been leading out on. And to do that, we need to run ads, right? We need to get the message out to people that this is a documentary that we want to finish. And so we've gone through all the hoops, jumped through all the things that have been required of us by X, by Metta, which has both Facebook and Instagram, and even by Google, and repeatedly our ads campaigns have been shut down. No ads have been run. The same entities that suppressed the Biden story when the laptop first came out seem to determine that we not run any ads on their platforms. It's just unbelievable. Chris, this is an incredible movie. The facts are no longer in depth. Back in 2019, if you believe that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden did something wrong, you recall the conspiracy theorist. If you believe the laptop was real, you were told you're a Russian disinformation artist. Everything in this movie is now documented by evidence in the courts, in the Congress, who reporters like myself and Miranda and others. And yet there's a resistance to it. Where does that resistance come from? You know, I'm not sure, John. I spent the last year really trying to get this film out to the traditional distribution systems, the traditional Hollywood system. You know, you see lots of incredible documentaries on social issues in places like Netflix and HBO and all of the middlemen in Hollywood say, oh, we're not interested in a social issues, a social issues documentary. And I find that to be challenging because we, you know, we have, we've had so many incredible stories out there about things like Epstein and P Diddy and all these other, you know, scandals. And yet we can't get this story out there that was suppressed in the media in the 2020 election cycle. Yeah, it is remarkable. Chris, let me stay with you for a second. You got to meet all the players in this drama. You got to chronicle all of the resistance that they faced, all of the pressure. What's the most surprising thing when people are going to watch this movie, and it will get out. It's so important. What will be one of the most surprising things that most Americans will wake up to when they read it? I think they really actually understand how the quote unquote deep state actually functions. This is a documentation on how the Department of Justice actually stopped a criminal investigation on the parts of Gary and Joe, and they were doing their job as IRS investigators and agents, and they were stopped at every, every single way that they could be stopped. They were stopped. And to make it worse, I think we actually look at the documentation and the first hand accounts from gentlemen like yourself and Matt Taibbi, Miranda Devine, Mike Benz, incredible journalists who show that the FBI had the backdoor access to suppress the story. And I think that that suppression is still a danger to Americans today, and we need to get out there and actually pay attention to the fact that our media channels are not free. We do not have a free and open press. And I'm thankful for programs like yours to try to get out there and actually make a difference telling the stories that are actually happening out there. Yeah, and that suppression is real. I think a lot of people thought, well, we elected Donald Trump in 2024. The government's no longer doing it, but there are so many secret hands in the media world, in the social media world, the big tech world, that still can suppress something. Tristan, you sent a letter to members of Congress in the last few days, chronically, the concerns of what you experienced when you tried to advertise and promote this movie. What's been the response from Congress? Will Congress dig into this? We have been in communication with a couple different offices. We do hope that they will dig in. It's difficult because, you know, on the one hand, again, this is a private project, right? Unlike before, we were kind of helping the whistleblowers to expose to Congress the things that they saw. Here, we're trying to tell the story. So I think generally, Congress doesn't try to wait into private projects like this. But this is an instance where, again, some of the same players, like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg came to Congress after the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and said, this is totally our fault. You know, we should not have done that. We won't do it again. And so, again, to be stuck in this Kafka-esque series of maneuvers from Facebook where they tell you you're approved, then you're not approved, at one point, they took our social media ad manager, who's a very experienced person that we contracted with for this project. He's worked in Hollywood for quite some time. But he is a conservative. His entire account was suspended when we first listed this. And so, you know, on the one hand, Facebook can say, well, you just need to do X, Y, or Z. But it seems very clear to us that there's this pattern that we keep getting suspended on these platforms, just because this is the project we're advertising. The same trailer you showed a portion of, that's what we've submitted. And their unwillingness to show it, we think it's important for Congress to know that some things seem to have not changed, despite what these big social media companies are claiming to Congress. So Tristan, you, for years, represented and protected whistleblowers in Congress. You work with Senator Grousey's staff. I think he's the godfather of the modern whistleblower movement in America. So many big things have run through his office over the last 40 years. Chris, you make movies. I don't think you could find two more extraordinary characters, both as whistleblowers or as storytellers in a documentary than these two guys. Joe Ziegler is a Democrat. He's going up against his own party's machines because he knows it's the right thing to do. Gary Ishappely is one of the most accomplished IRS agents in the recent history of the IRS. And he can't get anything off the ground because people don't want this case. How does this story, from a Hollywood perspective, ring? I mean, the truth is, it's all nonfiction, but it has characters that would make even a fiction movie pretty exciting. I think the story is absolutely incredible, John. I mean, when you look at all of the things these guys went through for five years, they worked on this case before they were thrown off, before they came forward in Congress. And then even the cast of characters that extends beyond that with House Chairman Jason Smith and Jim Jordan and James Comer that helped these guys have the forum, the platform to actually speak about these things. Senator John Grassley for fighting the FBI for transparency. And when you start digging through all of this, there's been so many books written on this topic, and you dig down into the weeds, it is incredible, the level of detail that you find that all of these departments are working together to cover up what is an obvious crime, what is an obvious embezzlement of American money and this first family basically taking advantage of the executive branch, and so much was done to cover that up. And so we're just trying to tell the definitive story about what is fact and really try to get that out there because it's important that we put a capstone on this and say, look, this is the history of this. Let's not let this go by and not allow American people to understand. I think viewers of your program know this very well because if you're reporting, but there's still a big majority out there and a lot of people love watching, you know, video content and documentaries. And that's our goal is to get that story out there. Hi folks, a quick tour through Iran with one of the leaders of the Iranian resistance group, Ali Raza Jafar Zidab, up next after the commercial break. Welcome back everybody. This is fire between Iran and the United States is still holding together, albeit by a very thin silk thread. So what are we hoping comes from this? Is there a workable deal that the president can get with whoever is left from the regime or does more need to be done and can the Iranian people come out of this as winners as well? So joining us now the deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He's also the author of an excellent book. It's called the Iran Threat, Ali Raza Jafar Zada. Ali Raza, great to see you. Great to see you Amanda. And also John, always a pleasure to be on your show. Likewise. And you know, I think back at the conversations we've had on this show for the last, what, three years or so. And we are finally at this place where it feels like we are so very close. You've been fighting this regime for 47 years. You've seen plenty of attempts to overthrow them. What do you see coming in the coming days like this weekend and in the coming weeks? Well, this weekend is certainly going to be the focus is actually on the negotiations. And this is not the first time that the Ayatollahs have come to the negotiating table, but experience of the past decades proved that the only force and decisiveness and firmness works with this regime. And keep in mind that despite all the, you know, smoke screen and all the claims of victory as far as Iran regime is concerned, this regime is much weaker and much more vulnerable than they were even a year ago, not simply because of the military blows they received during the war, but most importantly, they are so concerned about their own population internally. It's not a coincidence that since about two weeks ago, the regime started executing political prisoners in the midst of the war. And they handpicked certain political prisoners who were focused on fighting the IRGC. There were six members of the main Iranian opposition movement, the MEK, who were executed. And these were all charged with trying to recruit the young people who are arming themselves with the goal of overthrowing the regime, but also extended those executions to the younger people who were arrested during the January of this year, during the protests, who pursued the same strategy, disarming the Revolutionary Guards and trying to fight it. These are all signs of a very weak and vulnerable regime. That's where I think we should focus. Yeah, that's a really great point. Otherwise, I want to ask a little bit about the difference now than any other time that Iran's bet at a bargaining table. There is no Navy left in Iran. There's no air force. There's very few missiles left. The factories that made the missiles and drones substantially reduced. Does that make them more likely to capitulate than in past years where they played cat and mouse and said a lot of things and never delivered on them? Is this a more humiliated regime than prior regimes of Iranian negotiators? It certainly is a more humiliated regime than they have ever been, because they relied heavily on their proxies in the region. Much of that is gone or significantly reduced. They lost the biggest ally Assad in Syria. But also, internally speaking, the world has seen the population of Iran, who are vehemently opposed to the regime. Just this past January, there were protests in all 31 provinces of Iran, people chanting death to the dictator, death to Khomeini, death to the oppressor being the Shah or the Supreme Leader, making it clear that the desire of the people of Iran is for change. But also, the internal opposition is far stronger now than they ever were. Remember, just four days before the launch of the strike on, you know, before the war, the main Iranian opposition, the MEK, using 250 of their fighters, they launched a strike against the headquarters of then Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, inflicting heavy casualties of them. But 150 of them managed to leave the scene alive, showing the capability and intent of the organized opposition, showing the vulnerability of the regime, showing the world that the desire to get rid of the ayatollahs is not something external. It's not that, you know, the U.S. or other countries have a problem with the Iran regime. The biggest problem is actually the people of Iran want to overthrow this regime, and they have shown their desire and their capability. That's why I think this regime is far weaker than it has ever been. Yeah, great point. Well, Ali Reza, you mentioned the people of Iran, and I want to be very delicate with this question, because I know communication is happening a little bit. It's obviously not allowed on a grand scale from the inside to the outside, but I do know that you have communication with people there. What is the morale of Iranians? Well, you know, the Iranian people certainly, at least during the war, you know, everything was frozen because there's really not much you can do when, you know, there's bombings, everything, everywhere. But I think the, you know, when the ceasefire was announced by President Trump, our leader, Mrs. Mania Barajavi, welcomed that situation, saying that this will be an opportunity, certainly avoiding the targeting, you know, the infrastructure, the civilians, but also hoping that this will lead to the fall of the Iran regime, because the motto of the movement has been always for peace and freedom. This is also the desire of the Iranian people. I think the ceasefire and hopefully the end of the war would create space for the population to reignite not only the protests that we saw before, but adding to all of that is the organized force, the young people who are increasingly convinced that the only way to end the rule of the clerics is not just simply having the protest, but adding to it with a fighting force to confront the Revolutionary Guards. That's why these seven young people who were arrested during the January protests and were executed, all of them were involved in trying to obtain arms from the Revolutionary Guards at different bases. This is a new momentum, new shift of momentum in favor of the young people, in favor of a population that wants to see change relying on their own force, their own capabilities. And this is the biggest disaster when it comes to the Iran regime, the main concern that they have. And I think this is a huge asset when it comes to the countries in the region, the United States. I remember very well just last week, the President of the United States, he said that if the Iranian people have arms to fire back against the regime, against the Revolutionary Guards, that would change the whole equation. And that's exactly the direction the Iranian society is going. All right. So let's walk through that. Today I interviewed Congressman Tom McClintock. He said, your sister group, the MEK, is the best armed and the most likely to be able to take on that part of regime change. There have been reports that maybe the Kurds join or help in some fashion. Americans are wondering, when will that start? And we've done a lot of bombing, the bombing stop. There hasn't been that outpouring onto the streets in that next violent wave of overthrow. When do you think it starts and how do you think it starts, Salih Raoza? Well, you know, revolutions, you cannot plan exactly how these things happen. What is very clear is that when it comes to the people of Iran, nothing has changed. To the country, their desire to change the regime is even stronger now, especially after the massacre of the protesters in January of this year. They're more convinced now that they ever were, that they need to pick up arms and confront the Revolutionary Guards. You mentioned the Kurds. There are a lot of nationalities in Iran who are entirely fed up with this regime. You talked about the Kurds. You have the Baluchis, the Arabs down south, the Azeris, the lords. And, you know, they make up about 30 to 40 percent of the Iranian population who have a history of confronting the regime, both under the Shah. They confronted the Shah who was very suppressive against these minorities, but also against this regime. And of course, you know, the talks just started. I don't know whether this is how far this ceasefire is going to hold and what is going to lead to, but hopefully once it leads to a more permanent cessation of hostilities or peace, that certainly creates an opportunity and space for those who have very, you know, determined to fight the regime. The M.E.K. has a history of fighting the Ayatollahs. They had a very powerful army with tanks, armor, personnel carriers, field guns across the border in Iraq. And of course, the change of circumstances in 2003 changed the whole situation. But they are creating a similar infrastructure inside Iran, the younger ones who are increasingly resorting to organizing themselves, arming themselves and confronting the lusha guards. This movement has an experience of 47 years of fighting the regime. So do other nationalities in Iran. It's a combination of all of that that would eventually lead to the fall of the regime. But most importantly, Iran will not be fragmented like the other nations in the region. You know, Mrs. Rajavi, who heads the parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, she announced a provisional government that would be in charge for only six months. And their main task would be to set up free and fair elections, leading to the election of a national and constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, appoint a new interim government, and everything will be based on the vote of the population. So the mechanism is there, both for the overthrow of the regime, but also for the transitional period. All the elements are out there. It's the outside world that must realize that you don't pin hopes on the regime. You pin hopes on the people of Iran. You do everything to empower them and give them the voice. Hey, folks, one more good win to go. Grover Norquist, the champion of tax cuts, 30 year record of reducing taxes and getting thousands of candidates to sign a no new taxes pledge. He'll bring us up to speed on the anti-tax movement sweeping across America. Make you feel good before we head into the Sunday edition tomorrow. Grover Norquist after the break. Welcome back, America. I want to get to that breaking news story. The sand clock was almost down to one hour, but President Trump just announced he's going to hold off on the mass attack that he was going to launch on Iran tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Let me get you the details right now. He says that the Pakistani negotiators have been working in America, asked for the delay. It is subject to Iran immediately and completely opening the Strait of Hormuz, and that if that happens in the next few hours, there will be a double-sided, that's the president's word, double-sided ceasefire. And he expressed significant optimism that this moment may lead to a long-term resolution of Iran, which has terrorized the United States for 47 years since they took our embassy in 1979 when I was a heck of a lot younger. The last thing the president said on behalf of the United States of America, as president, also representing the countries of the Middle East in this crisis, it is an honor to have this long-term problem close to resolution. Go check out at Justin News.com. We got the full statement from President Trump. We'll be watching all through the night. Things could turn again, but right now President Trump ordering the holdoff of that attack gives some time to see if Iran will reciprocate by opening up the Strait of Hormuz completely, and then we move to a complete ceasefire. We'll have you on top of that all throughout the night tight. With that, let me turn to my next guest. I have known him for many decades. He is one of the most influential voices when it comes to tax reform in America. He's done more to get your taxes smaller and to fight to get spending done in anyone I know, including creating a famous pledge that thousands of politicians have now taken. He is the president of America's Tax Reform. He's a good friend. Grover Norcas. Grover, great to have you on the show. John, good to be with you. Just what I thought. There's no more ideas that you could come up with that maybe alleviate the tax burden, make a little more tax fairness in America. You always have another good one, a tremendous debate going on right now about ending an inflation tax on capital gains, basically creating a benchmark that would keep capital gains from growing just because of inflation, like the inflation that Joe Biden gave us. Talk a little bit about how this would work and how beneficial it could be to all of us. Absolutely. Look, the government cheats us when it prints too much money. When it prints money, creates inflation, every dollar in our pocket gets worth less. They add insult to injury because while Reagan indexed your wage income, too inflation so that when you got a pay increase in your paycheck because of inflation, your tax rate did not go up. That was Ronald Reagan, 1981, 82, 83. What didn't get indexed is capital gain, inflation in capital gains. When you sell your house, a lot of the value of your house that you pay taxes on, a lot of that profit is simply inflation. When you sell stocks or bonds that you've stored up all your life in order to have a life savings for retirement, a lot of what you sell is simply inflation in that capital gains. Farmers see this when they sell farmland. This is a huge, huge problem. We ought not to be taxing inflation. It can be fixed with an executive order out of the Treasury Department, a rulemaking. I've spoken to the Treasury Secretary about this. He understands he can do it. The President has said publicly that he has the power to do this, and he's right. There have been a number of judicial studies of this to simply say that the cost basis for when you sell your house or stocks or your farm or your small business is not what you paid for it originally, but what you paid for it originally plus the inflation that's taken place. So you only pay capital gains taxes on real gains. Be a tremendous boost in the value of every home, every stock, every business, every farm in the country. You did something I think that's so important to a lot of people here at Capital Gains. That's only for the wealthy, but the other of us who have 401Ks and those of us that have a home, those of us that have land, it affects all of us, the middle class, the working class all the way up. That often gets demagogued and not talked about, but this is a benefit to all Americans, not just the wealthy, right? Every year, 30 million people pay capital gains taxes, 30 million. There aren't 30 million billionaires in the country every year. And most of the people when they pay, most of the people who pay those taxes, three quarters of them are making less than $200,000 a year. So we're talking about average Americans, middle-income Americans pay capital gains taxes at least once in their life when they sell a house and other times as well. Yeah, such an important point. Before we let you go, real quickly, we only got about a minute left. There's an extraordinary movement that you've been leading for more than a decade, more and more states shrinking their income tax or getting rid of it entirely. Virginia may be an outlier now that's got a Democrat, a governor, but powerful movement starting to save people. Pockabook outside of the federal government. At the state level, sweeping the nation, there are already, we know, eight states with no income tax. There are 12 states run by Republicans. Sadly, Virginia might have become one, but it didn't. 12 states where the Republican governor legislature has said, we are going to zero. In five of those 12, they've actually passed the law that will click it down to zero. As revenue comes in, they don't spend the money, they use it to cut the income tax until it gets to zero. There are, used to be eight states that had single rate taxes, flat rate taxes. That's now 16. So more states are going to flat rate taxes, treat everyone the same, and more states are going all the way to zero. It is a huge change. New York and California are still going to Hades, but a lot of the rest of the country is moving in the correct position very quickly. All right, folks. That wraps up our Saturday edition of John Solomon Reports, the podcast from, you know, Justin News, a big thank you to Congressman Tom McClintyck, to Tristan Levitt, and his producer, Chris Dodge, on that new movie. And then Ali Razer Jafarzadip from the National Council for Resistance of Iran, and of course Grover Norcas. What a great show, very diverse conversation. We come to a lot of territory today. That's what we'd like to do here. Get you different ways to get you news that you can make up your own mind with. We like that. Hey, tomorrow, get some good ones. Congressman Chip Roy and Dr. Peter McCulloch will be on. Rebecca Grant will be joining us. That's a good one. And then a Florida congressional candidate. He's a former Navy submarine guy. I love this guy, George Moraitis. He's been very popular out there. We had a good conversation. Amanda and I did earlier this week. I want you to listen to that. We'll get him in here as well. That will be tomorrow's show. Until then, God bless you. And of course, have a good night.