Inside the Fight to Confirm Kash Patel as FBI Director | Clint Brown
If you ever plan on climbing Mount Everest, you’ll need what they call a sherpa. Named after the small Nepalese ethnic group that populate the Himalayas, sherpas are mountain guides to help climbers navigate the brutal and unpredictable conditions of Everest. It’s no surprise, then, that Washington has adopted the term “sherpa” for counselors to presidential cabinet nominees during the confirmation process. If you think climbing Everest is hard, just try climbing Capitol Hill.
Clint Brown, now the president of American Path, was the sherpa for one of the Trump administration’s toughest nominee battles: the confirmation of FBI Director Kash Patel. Brown takes viewers inside this uphill battle, which ended with a 51-49 vote to confirm Patel, in this week’s episode of "The Signal Sitdown."
With over a decade of Senate experience, Brown helped Patel understand Senate dynamics and procedure so Patel could sell the vision he and Trump had for the FBI.
Tune in to find out what happens next
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1:06:19
'Trump Is Bringing Democracy Back': Is Trump the Most Honest Politician in Washington?
It's been 15 days since "Liberation Day," the day President Donald Trump announced a slew of tariffs on foreign goods.
After unexpected movement in the bond market—bond yields rose rather than fell—Trump announced a 90 day pause on many of his April 2 tariffs. Since "Liberation Day," however, the administration claims more than 130 countries have come to the negotiating table. Both proponents and critics of Trump's tariffs can agree that the ongoing trade negotiations are a testament to the monumental undertaking the American people elected Trump to accomplish: A reordering of the global exchange of labor, goods, and services.
Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age, joined "The Signal Sitdown" this week to break down the Trump administration's strategy to effectuate an overhaul of the American system and the challenges the administration could face along the way.
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Rod Dreher: Communist Dissidents Have a Message For the West
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested on Feb. 12, 1974, for speaking out about the evils of Soviet communism. The next day, he was exiled to the West and would not touch Russian soil again for more than 15 years.
On the day of his arrest, Solzhenitsyn published an essay titled “Live Not by Lies.” The four-page essay was a call for civic courage: The end of Soviet totalitarianism would begin only when the Russian people refused to accept the regime’s lies.
Solzhenitsyn’s essay inspired the title of Rod Dreher’s 2020 book “Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.” Almost five years later, Angel Studios has turned Dreher’s book into a four-part documentary series focusing on the stories of the brave souls that stood up to communist regimes. Dreher joined “The Signal Sitdown” to give a behind the scenes look at the Angel Studios project.
Dreher started working on “Live Not by Lies” when he received a shocking phone call.
Tune in to find out what happened next:
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This Republican Was on to USAID Corruption Before DOGE Even Existed | Rep. Eli Crane
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., is a fighter. The week after 9/11, he dropped out of the University of Arizona to join the Navy and accomplished his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. In 2023, he brought that fighting spirit to Congress, where he’s been proven prescient on major issues such as America’s actual role in the Ukraine war and the need to reign in out-of-control government spending from agencies like USAID.
Crane joined this week’s episode of "The Signal Sitdown" on the heels of a bombshell report from The New York Times about the extent of U.S. involvement in Ukraine and in the midst of major negotiations between Republicans in the House and Senate on cuts to government spending.
The Arizona congressman was onto the U.S. Agency for International Development before DOGE drew attention to it this year.
“I tried to defund USAID last Congress by 50%,” Crane told "The Signal Sitdown."
After Crane co-sponsored a piece of legislation from former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz in August 2023 to abolish USAID, he brought an amendment to the House floor to slash USAID funding in half.
“Democrats stopped it and Republicans stopped it,” Crane recalled. The amendment failed, with 102 in favor to 326 opposed. A majority of House Republicans—114 of them to be exact—voted against Crane’s amendment.
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43:14
Memer-in-Chief: How Donald Trump Took the Digital Town Square by Storm | Kaelan Dorr
President Donald Trump has made massive inroads with Gen Z voters through an alternative media strategy that took the president’s message directly to the digital town square.
As a deputy assistant to the president and White House deputy communications director, Kaelan Dorr is a key player in executing Trump's digital media strategy. He joined a special episode of The Signal Sitdown to discuss how Trump became “the Memer-in-Chief.”
Over the course of the 2024 campaign, Trump eschewed traditional media, opting for a media strategy that met voters where they were consuming content. The Trump team brought the president’s message to podcasts and social media platforms instead of op-eds and primetime cable news. The big secret, however, is that this strategy is actually “very simple,” Dorr said. “I think that's what makes it very effective at the end of the day.”
“The beauty of the digital strategy and of the movement we've kind of curated over the last decade is that anybody can do it,” Dorr told me. “It's truly valuable because it doesn't require an ad executive on Madison Avenue… to talk about ‘what's our message progression on this issue’ and ‘how do we do videos that tell a story over time?’”
“I like to tell everybody this is the easiest job I've ever had because the American people gave us a honey-do list and we're just checking things off.”
Trump’s infamous use of social media serves as the foundation for the rest of the administration’s digital strategy.
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Your government is out of control. It’s doing things it has no business doing.
It spends way too much money. It gets involved in way too many wars. It not only tells you what you can and can’t say—it actively censors you.
And the things your government should do, it can’t, or won’t, do at all.
It can’t keep your streets clean of crime and filth. It can’t keep your neighborhoods safe enough for kids to play outside. It can’t even prevent your country from being invaded by millions of illegal migrants.
Why is that?
Because your leaders no longer represent you. They represent themselves and their friends.
On each episode of "The Signal Sitdown," politics editor Bradley Devlin exposes how the sausage really gets made in Washington, D.C. with the help of guests who have experience on the inside.
"The Signal Sitdown" takes you inside the biggest battles in Washington, D.C., as they happen. We’ll analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective and together reclaim government from the self-serving elites.
Fingers will be pointed.
Names will be named.
USA