The Final 5: July 09, 2026

Also, apparently serving looks staring down the deputy to make sure he didn't move and once her family got across She got out of the way of traffic and joined her family. Hope you have a good night Here's the final five with our Jim Lokay Right now in the final five the US military is waging war overseas as the ceasefire with Iran crumbles Democrats are working on a project 2029 and a political candidate with a literal trash can for her face or is a court in Great Britain bins It's a final five governor Tallyho then We won the war guys, I can't believe we just I can't believe they did that on me You weren't I wasn't expecting that were you of course not but that's what you get here on Fox local. Welcome in tonight There are escalating back-and-forth attacks in the war with Iran after President Trump declared the ceasefire is over The u.s. Launched airstrikes early today with Tehran responding by targeting u.s. Gulf allies Iranian officials accused the u.s. Of attacking the country's sole nuclear power plant Well, President Trump says Iran hit ships in the Strait of Hormuz This of course has proven to be a top issue for politicians back home But we want to be really clear about something here. The war is with Iran. That's Iran with an N We're in a war in Iraq That's once again kind of at the forefront that we don't get that done. We're gonna have serious issues down the road Which some people back in Wisconsin were very likely to have said F Scott Fitzgerald Tonight the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been officially radio laid to rest President Trump claims He is still up for negotiations, which were set to begin after the services And they want to make a deal so badly they called a little while ago they want to make a deal so bad I just don't know if they're worthy of making They want to make a deal very badly which kind of sounds familiar Especially if you're the type that watches CNN They want to make a deal when they want to make a deal so badly. They want to make a deal so badly I do see a deal in Iran. It's looking very good that we're gonna make a deal This process should go very quickly. We're gonna end that war very quickly We're in the final throes of what will be a very very good deal And they want to make the deal a lot more than I do. We have our deal done with Iran and Should be successful Yep Meanwhile today former Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool it all stems from those rubbery shards of pool coating that started floating to the top of the bright green water of the pool after the Workers finished construction turn is due back in court for a status hearing August 5th this week three other people were slapped with similar federal charges This indictment reflects the administration's effort to scapegoat Davy And to shift blame for their own failures now prosecutors claim Hearn caused more than $1,000 in damage But there are a lot of questions as to whether or not the pool was damaged before he even got to it There was an effort a violent effort to rip up the ceiling from the bottom of the pool and Irrespective of Whether or not, you know We think that you know there there is some situation that preceded it We can state and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused damage Oh, he damaged it further, but do you believe there had already been damaged he damaged the pool He damaged this pool Well good, I'm glad you've got that Evans come on in the grand jury you can testify next by the way And let's just point out here because what at one point the word from the White House was that there was some 300 foot slash through the middle of it all we've never seen any evidence that somebody took a box cutter and slashed the pool liner We did see people around the edge of it and there are people holding up pieces of that liner The question is does it rise to the level of a federal crime? We shall see Janine Pirro's certainly hope so meantime Democrats had made a Russian to replace Senate candidate Graham Platner after he announced He was pulling out of the race last night Platner dropped out after a woman came forward accusing him of rape Main Democrats have signed off on a new nominating convention who will make the decision on his replacements They have until July 27th to name a new nominee But Platner has faced all kinds of strange allegations for months from old posts He made online and stories from ex-girlfriends to a symbol resembling a Nazi tattoo on his chest You have to do a better job vetting candidates Look, I think there's a whole process and I think the the fact of the matter is Graham Platner and was the series of red flat what we heard Earlier this week was not new Platner was one of several Democrats who invoked the idea of Democratic socialism in their campaigns Republicans are not fans of the idea and like many things no one sums that up quite like Louisiana senator John Kennedy Unless you were playing Frisbee in the quad during history class or economics class, you know the list You know that the list of countries that has tried that have tried socialism and rejected it is as It's as long as King Kong's genitalia that is a new one, but Socialism and communism have become a couple steady buzzwords from Republicans heading into the midterms Let's talk about that with conservative strategists and CEO of compass strategies Luke ball up late with me tonight Here on the final five as somebody who has worked on the hill I mean, how many how many staffers does that go through? It has to be rejected by four or five and yet still get used. I've seen things get overridden Multiple times and if that were my boss, I mean, I love them. I just would look at Probably using some other book. Yeah Colorful nevertheless, I mean it is true That seems to be the buzz from the White House a lot of a lot of Republicans running in this cycle here is going back To words like communism and socialism as evidenced by this this leftward lurch by a lot of Democrats Graham Platt or one of them you'd be hard-pressed to find many moderates who are doing well with the Democrat base right now I think there's a handful maybe Andy Beshear and some folks like that But the energy is really behind this new progressive Democrat socialist vein within the party and let's be very clear The moderates are willing to open up their big tent Hakeem Jeffries is willing to let these people in but I'm calling them legacy Democrats now Because the Democrat socialists have no intention of allowing those moderates to remain in the tent. They're not here to fine-tune the party They're not here to fine-tune America They're here to fundamentally overhaul it and replace it with something else And if the moderates are upset about the way their party is going Speak now forever hold your peace because it has gained traction It has gained popularity and as far as I can tell I don't see many people saying this isn't the direction that we should be Going it just kind of feels like there's a void of leadership atop and this is what's been filling it Well when you look at Bernie Sanders who really brought Democratic socialism into if you want to call it the mainstream back in 2016 Which was popular among a lot of people certainly not enough But there was a lot of buzz enough in the Democratic Party where you had the possibility of him Toppling Hillary Clinton and obviously we saw the system was Jury rigged to prevent that from happening Yeah, the reason is it has elements of populism in it or at least populist messaging but if you fast-forward the reason the White House or fast-forward throughout history the reason the White House keeps saying Communism and the president has leapt to this term is because socialism is a stepping stone to communism Which is full-blown government control of all of the means of enterprise all of the businesses and you've seen throughout history That stepping stone occurs, so that's why the president's leaping to that He has a tendency to go to the extreme and just look further down the road I don't think he's wrong for doing so and that's why the Messaging has been so pointed from the Republican camp to say you guys are on a slippery slope Is this actually what you want your party to look like in the direction you want America to go and I have great Conversations with Democrats who are very frightened about this vein in their party and don't want it to slide that way when you talk about industry and I think It's important clarification I want to get from you on this because the president has himself has suggested maybe when it comes to AI companies Maybe the federal government take a stake in certain companies and certain industries there and people on the left have said wait Isn't that isn't this exactly what you tend to espouse that you're against? I've been positioned with that question From my friends on the left and my response number one is that if Democrats socialists were thrilled about the thing the president was saying We would hear it from them, but we don't they're vehemently opposed to him doing so secondly I don't think that the federal government should be taking stakes in companies like that. It feels too much like reminiscent of Wall Street bailouts or the government getting involved in things like Amtrak and trying to run private businesses or things that should be private businesses So that is where I think a lot of historic conservatives or maybe people who are more in line with the Tea Party conservatives would depart from the new brand of Populism that the president's putting forward his goal at the end of the day is to do something that is appealing to the American worker To his base that generally has been framed as the forgotten men and women But at at some point you do have to draw a line and say hey even if this borrows from a particular Ideology and doesn't completely brand itself as such. I still think it's a slippery slope for us to go down Before we go we mentioned Platner off the top and we are now Seeing another for the second time in the last two years the Democratic Party in Maine They've sort of a eased a candidate out the door here And now they're going to find a replacement candidate two years ago with President Biden this time around with Platner in Maine Do you think in Maine they go for somebody who was also to the left? Are they gonna repeat history or are they gonna go more mainstream up there to begin? The Democrats are not handcuffed to this guy and they weren't handcuffed to him the first time around They had Janet Mills still in the ballot, even though she had said she wasn't going to continue her campaign They had the option to go another direction But they chose somebody who had a CVS receipt long list of scandals Any one of them would get you banned from every Chuck E. Cheese in elementary school in the country and yet they still full Fully embraced him full-throated endorsement of him so I don't want to hear anything from the Democrats if a Republican has any one of those scandals further down the line because I Can pull out a CVS receipt which I've brought on TV many times before and say these are all the things you were fine with You guys can give a pass to this Republican loop loop all here on the final five tonight. Great to see you again, man Thanks for always appreciate it. Thanks and the final five is back right after this During the 2024 campaign you heard Republicans disavow the idea of project 2025 Until Trump 2.0 took hold and many of the things written in that extensive document became fact became real life Now Democrats are trying to figure out how they counter it for 2029 My guest tonight writing a piece about this for notice about the Democrats effort to craft their own project 2029 Daniela Diaz reports on politics in Congress for notice and she's up late with me tonight here on the final five Daniela Good to see you. Thanks for joining us tonight Thanks for having me. Okay, let's talk first and foremost about This project 2025 was something that Democrats had said hey This is coming down the pipeline and you heard everybody from the White House on down saying we had nothing to do with it But but it was an ambitious document that really laid out a blueprint for what the conservative priorities were Should President Trump should he have been reelected? Why are Democrats now looking to counter this? When I spoke to this group of Democrats Jim It was clear that they saw the success of project 2025 when Russ bought and it's other group of architects who wrote that piece When they were drafting this their thought their thinking was that President Donald Trump would be reelected and that he would go off He's a list of policy points that they found to be very important in a second term for his presidency When they saw the success of that they realized we need our own playbook We need to be able to do our own thing here Jim to counter what we're seeing in this second Trump Administration to be able to fight back and try to convince voters that we have policies that we're gonna run on Every Democrat I've spoken to when it comes to trying to have a playbook for 2028 even 2026 in the midterm It's we're not just doing an anti Trump playbook. It's these are the policy issues that we're going On to convince voters that this is why we elected again So when I talked to this group, they're a random group of Democrats not affiliated with any sort of think-tank whether they're progressive or moderate They say they are just trying to create some sort of base of policies when it comes to health care child care the border I mean, it's anything you can think of corruption And what they're saying is we're going to try to talk to 2028 candidates about what we think they should run on They can take what we're saying kind of the way we saw with project 2025 But really we want to convince voters that we're thinking about ways to improve their lives and why they should try to Elect a Democrat for 2028 instead of a Republican Jim You can talk so much about policy and clearly that's that you that's what politics should be all about But one thing we learned from project 2025 is that personnel matters just as much in insofar as we saw The government workforce the federal workforce drastically reshaped or at least attempts to drastically reshape it When we look at both of those factors going in is this about is about the ideas or building the bench of people that can implement these ideas it's both I spoke to the the chief architect co-founder Chad Maisel and he told me look we saw the Way that project 2025 was drafted. It was drafted in secrecy. It was drafted way He called it quoting him a sinister effort. He said we're doing something different. We want to be transparent We want people to see how we're doing this what we think about it And we want it to be a variety of different issues Not just when it comes to the federal government and changes there, but also real policy issues. How should we talk? How should Democrats tackle health care in 2028? They're all over the map Think of all the different factions in the Democratic Party the way they see this is they think it should be a bigger picture Conversation of where Democrats overall on these major issues I focused specifically in my story about child care and how they believe that universal child care some sort of Stipend to be able to help working Americans be able to afford child care, which you know, it's become incredibly expensive I think any parent will say It's incredibly expensive and difficult to be able to pay for in this day and age in the United States They believe in options and they drafted a policy where it could be either The government is paying a stay-at-home parent a thousand dollar stipend a month to be able to take care of their kids So that they're at least getting some sort of financial gain Or they are able to get some sort of stipend to be able to put their kids in a daycare So that's one thing that they looked at and trying to find ways to pay for it to Jim I mean, they're not just thinking of implementing this and and telling explaining to Democratic presidential candidates How to have this as a policy they should consider but also look we're trying to figure out ways to pay for this Trying to figure out ways that this could be implemented easily and work with our government last thing As we talk about the state of the Republican Party going into the 2024 election It was clear that that became Donald Trump's party and and you were more or less on board with the Trump train or or you? Weren't the Democrats right now are still having this internal struggle about do you run candidates? Who are more progressive and we saw play out in Maine how that blew up in their faces with Graham Platner There seems to be some some internal differences here Can Democrats get past those differences to come up with a document that makes everybody happy or is that not the goal here? The optimism is Palpable, I mean, it's palpable It's clear that they think that they can overcome a lot of these differences when I specifically talked to The authors of who are writing the project 2029 they say it's not about the different factions in the Democratic Party We're not progressive. We're not moderate What it really is about is that we just have some sort of baseline policy issues that anyone can use if they're not completely Politically one way or another however the way I have seen this Jim I've been covering politics for over a decade I've been covering Congress for many many years not nearly a decade But you know about seven years and I've seen that when I talk to Democrats across the faction different factions They have different opinions about how this should all play out. I mean progressives are saying Medicare for all for health care Moderates are saying that's too progressive It's gonna be really really interesting to see once all of this playbook is written, which is why we've been covering it How these presidential candidates once they announced decide to follow this blueprint this this Playbook that is being laid out for them publicly online. Anyone can see what these authors are writing They're from different factions of the Democratic Party. So we'll see how they respond But you know I know one thing there's definitely going to be more than a dozen Democrats that are gonna run for president Maybe even more than 20 Jim. I just remember those We had so many in 2016 that we had the the main debate and the undercard debate and all that stuff We're gonna see where it goes from here. But in the meantime, Daniela great to see you tonight. We really appreciate you joining us Thank you so much for having me Jim and you could read her reporting and notice We'll pull shot a link on social media in the meantime final fabs is back after this Well our time here is the third block here on the final five and if you think American politics are strange. Well You're right. But at least we don't live in the UK, right? That's because we won the war people but one British politician scheme to clear his own name could wind up backfiring in perhaps the most Hilarious way possible that is Nigel Farage leader of the country's populist Reform Party right now He's under investigation for receiving millions of dollars in gifts from wealthy backers But now in an effort to discredit the investigation He quit his job just to run again in the resulting special election to find his replacement saying quotes I've decided the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. I will fight to win So who would be who will be brave enough to stand up to Nigel Farage once and for all? count bin face He describes himself as a fifty nine hundred year old intergalactic space warrior from the planet Sigma 9 He is famously run in every prime minister's election since 2017 as well as several other high-profile races He even got a whopping 24,000 votes when he ran for mayor of London in 2021 Maybe because of the issues he said he was running on Why are you standing in this election just a stunt it's it's a because it's happening be I was at a loose end See because I believe elected mayor should serve out their terms before they're eligible to stand for Parliament You've made a sensible political serious political point there. Well, no, you're supposed to be impartial mix So let me carry on I'm going to replace the traffic lights on Liverpool Road our price cap We can kebabs at two pounds. I'll make cyclists to disobey the highway code have to ride unicycles instead But back to Farage his political critics have long called for him to be removed from office and right now They technically have an opportunity to run a candidate against him But the problem is Farage's constituents love him and he's likely to win Especially since all the major parties in the country say they are not even going to try which means Count bin face is the only person brave enough to run against him. Well, it may be strange Maybe politics in general were strange no matter what country you're in I mean remember all those people running in our last presidential election the same ones who? Thought they could be POTUS. Yeah, and no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump or Nikki Haley or Dean Phillips or Robert F Kennedy jr Or even Joseph Maldonado passage aka the Tiger King aka Joe exotic in the hat on the right But all the way on the left a man who has run campaign since 1987 sometimes as a Democrat Sometimes as a Republican and sometimes as independent but always with a boot on his head vermin supreme on the platform of free ponies for all And come back from the final five who's slipping soundly in his dancing and turning tonight Texas is one of the most watched Senate races. We're gonna see in our lifetime This is where Democrats stand a chance of flipping a seat Now that Ken Paxton with the help of President Trump toppled longtime senator John Cornyn in a Republican primary and the reason why that is Why Paxton is controversial? He was impeached He's an accused adulterer But the president loves him because he made election fraud a defining issue of his political career The problem is a Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigation says Paxton himself may have voted in six elections Using an address where he no longer lived potentially violating the very same residency rules His office has aggressively defended Paxton's campaign denies the wrongdoing and calls the report politically motivated But for Ken Paxton if your political brand is that nobody is above election law Voters are going to ask whether that standard applies to you too and no doubt as Democratic Challenger James Tallarico will bring this up as well. That's your final five We thank you so much for watching. We're back at it again tomorrow at 1130. I we really don't need to play this song anymore Thank you so much for watching