King Trump’s Gold-Plated Touch

0:00Irreverent news talk, opinion, satire. It's Newsweek Radio. I'm Jesse Edwards. And here's Donald Trump back in February talking about building the White House ballroom, claiming that it would never cost the taxpayer not one single cent. Take a listen. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. No, that's the wrong clip. The one about the ballroom. We're building a ballroom for 150 years. They've wanted a great ballroom. We did this no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever. This was all donations made by friends of mine. People that love our country, they love the White House, it will be totally, totally tax-free.

0:38Not one penny of tax will be donated to this. And here's Lindsey Graham introducing legislation to fund the ballroom with taxpayer dollars. You can't make this stuff up. We're going to introduce legislation that would authorize$400 million to be spent to build the presidential ballroom. That's all, folks. What a scam. But by all means, let's let Lindsey Graham continue here. Who knows what'll fall out of his pie hole if we let him keep jibber-jabbering. And we've paid for it by offsetting it with custom fees. Oh, that's a line of corporate BS if I've ever heard one before. We've paid for it by offsetting it with custom fees.

1:23Whatever the hell that means. Continue, Lindsey. The estimate is$332 million. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought the original projection was more like$200 million. It's about$200 million. The estimate is$332 million. We're going to do$400 million because I think it's probably going to take more. You think? Wow. So the budget has doubled. I think we all predicted that. And they haven't even started building it yet. This thing is going to cost a billion dollars before the Democrats tear it down, hopefully. I mean, isn't that what we're going to do with this thing if he builds it? I don't think he'll be able to pull it off personally, But it'll be interesting to see what the next administration does with it, assuming it's the opposition.

2:02Keep talking, Lindsey. Private donations can be used, but I think they should be used for buying China and stuff like that. Wait a minute. Is he talking about buying China like in dishes? They had a big event when the president of China comes in, when somebody comes in of magnitude. They put a tent out on the lawn. if it rained you were in deep trouble because the only part of the lawn that they can do it is a very low section. Okay, thank you, Grandpa Trump. They put a tent out on the lawn. Now I'm more confused than ever. Some other top trending Trump headlines over at Newsweek.com today. Trump posts meme showing himself with an assault rifle in Iran warning.

2:42I thought convicted felons weren't allowed to own firearms. Do you think anybody would even hold Trump accountable for being a felon in possession of a firearm at this point? Why would they? Who's going to turn him in? The Secret Service? And I don't agree with the term assault rifle either. Because every rifle, by definition, is an assault rifle. This isn't even a real picture of him holding an AR-15. It's just AI slop with a backdrop of exploding buildings in Iran. Apparently, he's not aware the Iranians have been preparing for this precise moment, I don't know, for the last 50 years. And he's fallen directly into their trap as only someone like he could.

3:17Because whatever Donald Trump says in this situation is an absolute lie, as long as the Iranians remain physically capable of securing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump can go on live camera all day long blathering about how he's crippled the Iranian military and how they're begging for his mercy. They don't know what's happening. Their Navy's gone. Their Air Force is gone. Their anti-aircraft is all gone. It's all gone. Their radar is all gone. their leaders are all gone the next set of leaders are all gone nobody not even his own people believe him when it's clear even to the rest of us even loosely paying attention that the Iranians continue to control this single waterway with enough speed and precision to dominate and command the entire area so apparently we cannot just bomb the Iranians into submission and clearly the only way to capture the Strait of Hormuz is boots on the ground so they can surround the place and allow safe passage as the U.S.

4:18sees fit. But that's never going to happen. Because even as dense as Trump is, even he knows what a costly and highly unpopular decision that would be. That doesn't mean he's not going to do it. It just means that would definitely be his final act as president because the entire region explodes at that point. The airstrikes that we hit Iran with were almost like casual flirting to a culture that's been obsessed with fighting a war with us for longer than most people on both sides have been alive. With exception of the school that we bombed and killed a bunch of little girls and teachers and parents apparently.

4:55Just compare this to the war in Iraq and Donald Trump makes George W. Bush look more like George effing Washington in comparison. Iraq was an absolute disaster, but at least there was a clear mission with an unstoppable momentum that went in to get the job done. And I'm not even sure what Trump is doing over there in the Middle East right now. But it sure looks to me like he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Because it's entirely possible that the man has never understood anything he's ever done on any meaningful level. Another top trending Trumpy headline at Newsweek.com. His approval rating has hit a new low on the cost of living.

5:31Oh, he doesn't care. How do we fix this country? How do we come back together? I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. He thinks the cost of living is fake news and a Democrat scam. They use the word affordability. It's a Democrat hoax. They're the ones that drove the prices up. And all they do is say, affordability. Yeah, remember that next time it costs you$150 to fill up your F-150, my fellow conservatives. I mean, not to mention that he campaigned on cutting the cost of living in half. So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one.

6:03A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper. We're going to bring prices way down and we're going to get it done fast. We're going to bring down prices of everything. We're going to get the energy prices down almost immediately. We're going to reduce energy and electricity prices. It'll also bring your grocery bill way down. Prices will come down. You just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything. How can a family afford that? Just imagine how many conservatives are out there across America quietly debating to themselves whether or not it's time to take down that old sun-faded Trump-Vance campaign sign off the fence post down by the road.

6:44You know, most of them are going to leave it up no matter what happens.

6:50But I do enjoy thinking about the internal conflict that's playing out in the conservative mind right now who is secretly disgusted by Trump's performance this time around. Trump's approval rating has fallen to its lowest point since his return to office last January, as voters turned sharply against his handling of the cost of living amid intensifying inflation pressures following the Iran war's disruption of global energy markets, according to a new Reuters Ipsos poll. I'm a very stable genius. And now the stable genius has inserted a portrait of himself inside of U.S. passports. What a complete narcissist.

7:26This is third world dictator behavior. If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third world country. Which isn't entirely surprising behavior coming from a man who appears to be taking the United States down to a third world level. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Developing nation is the preferred nomenclature of our time. The U.S. State Department is finalizing plans to include Trump's portrait on our new passports in what would be the first time a sitting president has been featured on official travel documents, because why not, I guess. The new passport design features the president on the inside of the cover to commemorate the 250th anniversary of U.S.

8:04independence, the State Department told Newsweek. One design included Trump's signature in gold. Well, and look, I guess at this point, even I would vote for a Democrat if they would simply promise to ease up on the woke nonsense and focus instead on fixing everything that Trump is doing like this. From inserting his picture in our passports to destroying the east wing of the White House to paving over the Rose Garden or that stupid presidential hall of fame that left out Joe Biden and all of the fake gold spray paint and Home Depot accents. Yeah, the first politician to promise that we will round up all of this garbage and set it on fire in the National Mall gets my vote.

8:45No, no, I'm sorry. That's ridiculous. My vote doesn't mean anything, of course. Thanks to the Electoral College and the fact that I don't live in a swing state. But I still think the ticket for 2028 is restoration. Restoring America, starting with the White House itself. Because you're going to need to fumigate that thing before you ask the next guy or gal to move in. I'm sorry. Bring back the Rose Garden. Bring back the East Wing. If I were the next president, I would ban everything gold on the entire property. Nothing wrong with gold, but when it's all you've got, it's incredibly tacky, just like our president.

9:22And now he's going after former FBI director James Comey over that picture of seashells. Unbelievable. It's the oddest thing about our president. He couldn't make himself look any more ridiculous if he had a team of professional goofballs making him try. It reminds me of that show in Practical Jokers where the comedians would try to make each other do more and more embarrassing stunts in public without breaking character. Because Trump and everybody else around him never break character, no matter how dumb the things coming out of their mouths sound. We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.

9:54If I ever found myself around these people for some bizarre reason, I would constantly be looking for the hidden cameras. Because the behavior of Trump and company is that absurd. You couldn't pay somebody to be this fundamentally flawed as an act, and have it be convincing enough for anyone to believe it. That's what makes Trump so unbelievable. Which reminds me, where are those Epstein files? I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. Is anybody going to keep pushing for that, or did that just kind of disappear? And how on earth does he plan victory in Iran when he doesn't know what he's doing?

10:27We know he doesn't care about his campaign promises to cut the cost of living anymore. I couldn't care less. And what happened to rebuilding our infrastructure? Nothing. Crickets. It's all gone. It was all a scam. And now he's thinking about invading Cuba, when he can't even find his ass from a hole in Iran. God help us all. Good Lord. We did this no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever. We're going to introduce legislation that would authorize$400 million to be spent to secure, to build the presidential ballroom. That's all, folks.