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.

Tune in to find out what happened next!

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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.

Listen now to find out what happens next:

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President Donald Trump’s pace since returning to the White House has surprised the president’s friends, perhaps even more than his enemies.

On the 66th day of his administration, Trump signed the 100th executive order of his second term, breaking FDR’s record of 99 executive orders in the first 100 days. While Trump plows ahead, the leftist lawfare complex that once sought to imprison the president is attempting to handcuff his second term by filing more than 130 lawsuits against the administration.

As a deputy assistant to the president and Trump senior policy strategist, May Mailman is one of those administration staffers tasked with executing President Trump’s game plan. She sat down for a special episode of "The Signal Sitdown" filmed at the White House.

“I think actually the president's speed has always been this fast,” Mailman said of the offensive posture of the administration. It has always been, ‘I need this, I need this, let's go, let's go, let's go.’”

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Karoline Leavitt made history when she became the youngest person ever to hold the title White House press secretary.

In a special episode of "The Signal Sitdown" filmed at the White House, Leavitt opens up about her relationship with President Donald Trump, her political upbringing, and how the president is garnering record support with young voters.

At just 27 years old, Leavitt is tasked with communicating Trump’s priorities to the American people, oftentimes through testy exchanges with the adversarial corporate media in the White House briefing room.

"I don't think anyone could anticipate having this job," Leavitt told The Daily Signal. "Certainly, one may hope for it, but you never really know if it will happen."

These days, Leavitt makes headlines sparring with journalists, but once upon a time, she thought she might become one. "I always was enthralled with the media and news growing up," Leavitt said. "Always thought I wanted to be a reporter, actually on your side of the table, and covering the news."

That started to change, however, when Trump burst on to the political scene. "2016 was the first election I was actually eligible to vote in, and I cast my ballot in the New Hampshire primary for Donald Trump," Leavitt recalled.

Listen to find out what happens next:

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When Rep. Tom Emmer became the House GOP whip in 2023, Republicans' mission was simple: Limit the damage President Joe Biden did before President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, shared his party's struggles in an interview on "The Signal Sitdown." While coordinated opposition to a forceful administration is no easy chore (just ask former Speaker Kevin McCarthy or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer), governing, even with a trifecta, is even harder. But that’s precisely the task Emmer and his colleagues face.

The House majority whip peeled back the curtain on the dynamics inside the House Republican Conference as budget negotiations and bringing rogue federal judges to heel dominate conversations on Capitol Hill.

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On the heels of a Tuesday phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, joined “The Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss the latest on the push for peace.

Mills said the three-hour call between Trump and Putin “threw a little bit of cold water” on the prospects for a rapid peace. “The Russians don’t have the most incentive right now for the war to end,” he noted.

What we know of the call offers some evidence to Mills’ claim: While both leaders signaled they want the war to end, the only deliverable from the call was that Putin agreed on a 30-day halt on attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. 

Mills continued explaining why Russia lacks incentives to come to the table: Ukraine is only getting weaker.

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"Everything's computer!" President Donald Trump said on Tuesday while checking out a Tesla. The president might be right about that, not only regarding the Tesla, but for the future of the American economy: The Trump administration is attempting to usher in the AI economy while bringing the tech giants working on this technology to heel.

Its no small task, and two massive stories from the tech world that corporate media outlets swiftly swept under the rug this week are illustrative. Thus far, however, “it is a loud silence on the part of the media,” Wes Hodges, acting director of the Tech Policy Center at The Heritage Foundation, told me on this week's episode of ”The Signal Sitdown.”

The first story came from a Facebook whistleblower’s allegations that the tech giant was willing to bend over backward to appease the Chinese Communist Party, even sharing critical technological developments in AI and then “lying about it” to U.S. officials.

The second came from Elon Musk’s X. After X suffered a series of outages on Monday, Musk said the social media platform was the victim of “a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” Corporate media outlets swiftly trotted out experts to claim Musk’s claims were “garbage,” even though U.S. officials claim they have not yet been able to identify who was behind the cyberattack.

Though the corporate media wants the public to pay no mind to these stories, each provides essential insights into the fight for the future of the American economy, a fight President Donald Trump is fighting on two fronts. The first is with China; the second is with American elites.

“There is a lot of truth to being able to deflect and hide your source of attack with enough time and resources,” he said of those questioning whether the attack actually came from the Ukraine area. Nevertheless, “Musk's accusation that it came from Ukraine isn't something that we should rule out,” because of the enemies Musk has made since entering the political arena.

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“America is back,” President Donald Trump declared in his Tuesday address to Congress, making no bones about connecting what he sees as the imminent American revival to his electoral victory in November and the accomplishments of his first six weeks in office.

The president’s triumphant tone, and Democrats’ reactions to it, made Democrats look “like absolute clowns,” Daily Caller Senior Editor Amber Duke told me in this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown.”

Since their loss in November, Democrats claim to be doing a lot of soul searching, but apparently without much success, given that Democrats in Congress refused to even stand for the possibility of an American “golden age” under Trump, much less stand for families of migrant crime victims or a child on his way to beating brain cancer.

Democrats are adrift: The American people see it, and the president seems to delight in it. For Duke, “there were two things that Trump did that I thought were incredibly effective.”

“The first,” Duke said, “was listing specific accomplishments from the administration” just six weeks into Trump’s second term. “Typically, the president comes in the first year, they give this address, they're talking about the things that are wrong with the country, and what they're going to do throughout their administration to fix it.

“Well, Trump's already been fixing it. He's already accomplished a lot in his first six weeks, so it sounded like the type of speech that you would hear in year two, year three, even year four,” Duke explained.

Trump brought the receipts, too. Trump “back[ed] it up with data,” Duke said, particularly when it came to “examples of government waste, fraud, and abuse that DOGE has uncovered,” and issues of border security.

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Jim Justice’s life feels like an American folktale.

Standing at 6’7”, the Republican senator from West Virginia is built like Paul Bunyan. He, like Bunyan, has an animal sidekick in Babydog, his English bulldog. He sounds like a character written by Mark Twain.

Justice was born and raised in Raleigh County, West Virginia, where he’d ride his bike to school, play Little League baseball, and romp through the woods. He went to college on an athletic scholarship and became captain of the Marshall University golf team.

He then joined the family agriculture business, and became an eight-time national corn-growing champion. He’s headed too many businesses to count, but decided to run for public office. He served two terms as governor of West Virginia and is now the junior senator from West Virginia.

Justice and Babydog joined me this week on “The Signal Sitdown” to talk about his journey from West Virginia to Washington, D.C.

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On this week’s edition of “The Signal Sitdown,” Bradley Devlin speaks with Max Primorac, former acting chief operating officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), under the first Trump administration. As chief operating officer, Primorac saw firsthand how U.S. taxpayers unwittingly fund a litany of leftwing causes at home and abroad.

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