Democrats Flee, Republicans Redraw: A Heated Debate on Redistricting, Leadership, and the Future of America

Folks, they said it for us. Welcome to First Edition only on Newsmax 2. I’m Chris Alenzo. And I’m Tom Borelli in for John Burnett.

It’s Monday, August 4th already. I know. Here we are, August 4th.

We pushed back, you know, the deadline for a lot of the tariffs with respect to, you know, we had Liberation Day Part 2 on Friday. We’re still negotiating. But in terms of what Harry Enten was saying on CNN, the chief data analyst there, Tom, he took the words out of our mouths in terms of all of what Donald Trump was able to achieve, whether it was legislatively, through executive orders, what was happening at the border, and of course, the economy.

So we’ll get into that later in the show. Absolutely. It’s been an amazing, what, eight months, seven months, seven and a half months of President Trump and the country’s rocking and the world is following just the way it should be.

That’s exactly right. And we have more deadlines this week, too. You know, still negotiating a lot of the tariff deals.

And then also, we’ll get into foreign policy with respect to the August 8th deadline with Russia and what that entails. Because late on Friday afternoon, we learned that President Trump did send two submarines to Russia, an important move, given what we’ve been hearing from Dmitry Medvedev and everything. His mouth has been yapping too much.

A little too much. Two subs were sent to quiet his mouth. Correct.

And President Trump heeds the warnings. He’s not someone who’s going to sit on the sidelines. But he’s been also dealing, you know, economically with Russia, trying to impose those sanctions on them and seeing if that works.

So peace through strength, but also peace through, you know, two submarines stationed there, which is incredible. It really helps. It does.

It does. Being the big boy on the block. That’s right.

Well, good morning, everybody. Let’s get to our political panel right now. Gene Valentino is a GOP political strategist, and Bill Caruso is a Democrat strategist.

Good morning, gentlemen. Great to have you. Good morning.

So Gene, starting with you, your thoughts on CNN in terms of their numbers sky, laying it out there that President Trump is the most influential president this century. That’s pretty impressive, considering where CNN, on behalf of the rest of the liberal left media that has developed a disdain for Trump over the years, quite outspoken, has seen now that the facts speak louder than the words. And the facts are that Trump has been transformative on so many levels.

I just hope now that Governor Greg Abbott learns from Donald Trump on what it takes to be a leader and is able to get a legislature in place to get the redistricting taken care of in Texas. Bill, what are your thoughts on that CNN poll and overall on President Trump’s, what, first seven and a half months in office? Yeah, influential is an interesting word. Don’t disagree, by the way.

But, you know, what are we influencing and how? And I think the verdict’s still out on a couple things. You know, Donald Trump came in, you know, like a whirlwind and predicted a couple things that still haven’t come true. Peace in the Middle East, right? We’re still working on that.

We’re still getting there. There’s a lot of things that are positive and getting better, but still got a long way to go. You guys just spoke about what’s going on in Russia.

We’re escalating there, not de-escalating, right, where we’ve got two nuclear subs somewhere, right? We don’t know where they are, but somewhere responding to that. But the bigger issue is going to be the economy. All this other stuff is noise.

And, you know, tariffs. We’re talking about tariffs again. And what impact are tariffs having? And we just saw a jobs report.

The president fired that person now. But we’re going to see this week how people are starting to react to where we’re going into the fall. And I’ll come back to a different point.

The politics of where we’re going, you’ve got two gubernatorial elections coming up here. A lot of people are counting the Democratic Party out. We’ll see.

So far, right now, Donald Trump has been influencing a lot. But what’s the American public going to start responding to in a lot of things that still haven’t come true yet? Well, sure. There’s always a lot of variables with respect to the economy.

My brain and thoughts, and I think probably Krishna as well, goes right to the Federal Reserve. And too late, Powell is sitting on his hands, while interest rates should be dropping. And when you look at that job data, there’s no doubt about that, because the Fed has the dual mandate, inflation and maximum employment.

We need more jobs. There are a lot out there, but we need to keep moving. Gene, what are your thoughts on the economy in President Trump’s first seven and a half months? Well, the jobs, Tom, are, to me, another extension, an extension of stimulus that is put into an economy to create the jobs in the first place.

The tariffs created a Wall Street that was skittish and a little hyperbolic on whether they were successful or not. The tariffs work. While we all focused on a balanced budget on the expenditure side, we failed to take a look at the revenue side.

Look what happened in June. What was it, $22 billion? We can’t call it a profit. It’s not a government profit.

Maybe it is. But it was a positive fund balance in June of around $22 billion. We’re hearing it’s something over $27 billion in July.

This is profit, in effect, that is turning the economy around, whether it’s used to pay down debt or whether it’s used to stimulate more jobs, is the accents on the right syllable. And now the burden of proof, the onus is on the Federal Reserve under Powell to get stimulus in place by the reduction of an interest rate. If that fails to happen, then we have another issue to talk about.

Yeah, the issue is the Fed has become highly political. They’re not paying attention to the macroeconomic data, and they’ve been too late, which has not only hurt the average American, but it’s just hurt generations to come, because they can’t afford to buy homes. Mortgage rates are through the roof.

And in terms of everyday economics, the Fed doesn’t seem to be paying attention here. But I do want to get to this bill. I want to make sure we have time for it.

Texas, we were talking about Greg Abbott. They say everything is bigger in Texas. And right now, there is a very large controversy over redistricting.

Lone Star State Democrats have even crossed the border to stop Republicans from putting a redrawn congressional map in place. Governor Greg Abbott has said he will remove those lawmakers if they do not return to Texas by today. Do you think this is obstructionist antics, Bill, in terms of what the Democrats are doing? Or is this just par for the course in terms of redistricting efforts, and they’re acting within their realm of authority? Listen, gerrymandering is for cheaters and losers, whoever you are, either side of the aisle, cheaters and losers.

And the American public doesn’t stand for that crap. But moreover, the governor of Texas is an idiot if he’s going to start arresting legislators. Now, I don’t think that fleeing and hiding is the strategy for long-term success.

But I’m saying again, the governor of Texas is an idiot to be threatening to arrest legislators. It’s just stupid. Let’s get back to normal politics where we win at the ballot box and we don’t gerrymander districts and cheat to win.

That’s what we should be doing as Americans and in a democracy. Jean, your thoughts on the Democrat legislators running away from their jobs, if any one of us took off from our jobs, I’m not sure how we would be employed. Yeah, we would be fired.

Cheating and gerrymandering, though, that’s a good one. But Democrats have been doing that for years. Come on, come on.

You don’t wait for an election to fix an immediate problem. You don’t wait for an election to fix an immediate problem. And Governor Abbott is not stupid.

He’s a leader, and he’s done a great job managing Texas during a very unusual crisis that New York and other northern states did not have to deal with. The fact of the matter is the guy took the bull by the horns, just as Trump has done, to quash bad behavior. And we’re witnessing it in real time.

And lead follower, get the hell out of the way. We’ve got to save this nation. And I’m not waiting for an election for more filibustering and gerrymandering of the vote, never mind the district, to occur.

Yeah, well, interesting. So also, while we’re on the topic of Democrats, and this definitely isn’t good, a new AP poll finds that many Democrats are calling their party a little bit short in what they’re supposed to be doing. In fact, they’re calling them weak and ineffective.

On the flip side, Republicans are also a bit kinder to their party. This was a new poll out. Bill, what are your thoughts? Of course, polls are a snapshot of the moment, but of this moment, it doesn’t really look good for Democrats when they believe that their leaders are weak.

Listen, I think without a leader, the Democratic Party is somewhat rudderless right now. We’re going to have two elections coming up in a national sense this year. You have two major gubernatorial elections, one in New Jersey, one in Virginia.

Democrats are predicted to win those. If we don’t win those, I think we have a problem. I think building off of that, then we have midterm elections next year, and that’s where most of this action is going to be.

And I still think this is an election that’s going to be built on the economy. And if Donald Trump and his plan don’t pan out, Democrats are going to win in a walk both this year and the following year. And I’m not too worried over the long haul.

Right now is the snapshot in time. Sure, we’ve got some issues we’ve got to deal with, but don’t count the Democratic Party out. Well, we never put the bats away until the game is over.

Complacency is the enemy of everything, either personally, professionally, politically, or in sports. Never be arrogant. Never be complacent.

Gene, your thoughts? Well, we have a two-party system. While we take a punch or two at each other from time to time, I’m fond of the fact that it should remain a two-party system. We need a two-party system to make sure we vet the best for the nation, for the citizens who hired us, elected us.

It’s so important that we do so. But what I have a problem with is running, castigating one party over another when one party has caused the problem in the first place. You don’t get mad at me for trying to solve the problem that you created, is what I’m trying to say.

Yeah. And Bill, just going back to your point, two wrongs don’t make a right. I think in this case, the Republicans are just fighting fire with fire.

The Democrats have been gerrymandering for many, many years, whether it’s in New York or California. So why shouldn’t the Republicans be able to act in the same way? It’s not unconstitutional to redistrict and redraw the lines. I mean, this is something that we’ve seen for decades in terms of political activism and what the left has been doing.

So you could say whatever you want about Governor Abbott, but he’s also fighting fire with fire with Jasmine Crockett. I mean, she was quoted saying, it feels like we’re going to hell with respect to what’s happening in Texas. Those are pretty strong words.

In terms of the duties of those state legislators, they’re acting really childish, fleeing the state. They’re abdicating their duty. They’ve been elected.

They’ve been paid by taxpayers. This just seems like antics of a group of individuals who don’t care about our country. Yeah, and listen, that’s one way to spin it, but I’d also offer this to you.

This has been going on on both sides for years, and I’m making a different point here. This is what I do when I come on regularly here. I’m not going to take the side of one idiotic plan or another.

I think the American public’s fed up with this crap. Gerrymandering districts is wrong. Whatever side the aisle are, whoever you are, cheating is wrong.

Running away is wrong. People want their elected officials to work together, number one, in a bipartisan way to come together and to solve problems that are going to help their bottom line, that are going to help them and their economic interests. They’re going to help, by the way, make our borders secure.

They’re going to help defend our American interests. Period. Full stop.

The rest of this crap, we’re all tired of it. We’re tired of trying to explain, well, they did it. This sounds like my children.

Well, he hit me, so I hit him back. Stop it. Both of you go to your room.

Enough. Enough. We should all be calling this out and saying enough.

You know, Bill, I have another thought, but I’m going to come to Gene with this. So we know there’s been a lot of population growth, both in Florida and in Texas, and then, you know, what is it, 700,000 person per congressional district. So maybe the redistricting is part of the influx of people running away from blue states, going into red, and then you actually have to change the districts because of the changes in population.

Gene, is that the possibility here? Tom, you nailed it. Just as when I was a congressional candidate here in Florida, the district line changed. It changed because of a term called coturnimus, meaning one man, they’re trying to live up to the principle of one man, one vote.

As the population moves and recenters itself, so does the district itself. You can’t have one district weighted with 1,500,000 people and the next one next door at 300,000 people. That’s not one man and one vote in the terminology.

The fact of the matter is, is that why wouldn’t anyone not be surprised with the need to redistrict in Texas when you have such an invasion that’s occurred in the first place, legal or otherwise, that must be addressed to make sure that the balance is fair and equitable. And in terms of antics, too, Bill, I appreciate your analogy in terms of children acting and misbehaving, but the Democrats, again, are misbehaving, not with respect to the Trump appointments this past weekend. They had every opportunity to nominate people or to get through the nominations that Trump put forward, and they didn’t.

They went on vacation. These were pretty bipartisan individuals who were put forward, and in terms of our government functioning there, it seems like Chuck Schumer, he’s doing everything he can to try to cause gridlock, to try to cause confusion and really not help the political process at all, because there’s no reason that they couldn’t push through these nominees. Sounds like a problem for the Senate majority.

We’re in the minority right now. When we take control of the Senate, we can bring it up with whoever the leader is then. But Chuck Schumer certainly has a lot of influence, even in terms of trying to buy basically every single nomination and trying to get that through as well.

That’s right. Politics is fun and difficult sometimes. Children are playing games again, Bill.

Yeah, we’re rocking. But it’s a process, and listen, there are the minorities doing what they can, but the majority’s got to figure out how to get its act together, or they’re not going to be the majority anymore. Well, time will tell.

We’ll see. That’s right. We will watch.

Overall, you can’t complain about this amazing seven months of President Trump, both domestically and internationally. But on that note, we have to end this great discussion on a Monday morning. Jean Valentino, great seeing you, my friend.

Bill Caruso, my friend as well. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Have a great day, guys. Thank you. You too.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Coming up, Israel in the hot seat as the world criticizes how it’s handling the war with Hamas.

That’s right. We’re live from Tel Aviv after the break. You’re watching First Edition only on Newsmax 2. Stay with us.