ger. And if you've been paying attention to Tom Tillis lately, you probably said to yourself, he's acting like somebody who doesn't want to run for reelection. Well, turns out he didn't. And I believe that it was Laura Trump who is being considered as his potential replacement in North Carolina. He's North Carolina, right? Do I have that right? Well, so he's going away.

And Rand Paul, he says he's basically opposed to it because it increases the debt and he is opposed to anything that increases the debt. So not only does it push up the debt limit by five trillion, but depending on how you do the math and what weasel methods you use, it either increases the budget deficit by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years. That's what the CBO says. But the Republicans have come up with some kind of new math that turned that 3.3 trillion into nothing. So what they do is they say well if we don't increase taxes that's not a change so you don't count that. Even though it would increase the deficit, they found a way to pretend that that would be counting the dollars wrong. Oh my god. Yeah, it's as bad as you think. So I think Rand Paul's on the right track there.

Trump has said that if it doesn't get passed it will mean a 68% tax hike without the big beautiful bill. How many of you believe that if the big beautiful bill doesn't get passed that we're going to have a 68% tax hike? How in the world do you calculate that? That's not even slightly possible. Anyway, but that number is out there now.

I was curious how the media would summarize the bill because I have a hypothesis that when it comes to public support all that will matter is these summarizers because there's something like 25 different topics that the big beautiful bill addresses. But if you read a story about it, it's not going to list 25 things and tell you what people think about each of those elements. They're going to pick out what they think are the topline things. So I was looking at the Wall Street Journal and I was curious how they would summarize the bill. So this is their summary and you could tell I think from the summary not 100% with certainty but it's suggestive of what the public will think about it because the media tells the public what their opinions are and if the media has summarized it one way versus another way you could kind of know what at least their readers will think of it.

So Wall Street Journal says broadly, so this would be just sort of a broad summary of the bill, the mega bill would extend tax cuts and boost defense and border funding while cutting spending on Medicaid and food aid. It would add nearly 3.3 trillion to deficits compared to current law and compared to letting the tax cuts expire as they would otherwise. Now if you knew that that was the only thing that the public would know about this bill, would it pass? Nope. Because the Democrats are going to look at the part where they say Medicaid and food aid will be cut and they're going to say, "Nope." And then the Republicans will look at the part where it's adding to the deficit by 3.3 trillion and they'll say, "Nope." So the Wall Street Journal has given both sides reason to say no. You know, even if you like extending tax cuts and boosting defense and military, you probably rank those lower than these other hot items like Medicaid and food aid and deficit. If you ask me, the deficit is more important than all the other stuff. So that would suggest there's going to be a little bit of trouble getting this approved and making it popular enough that Republicans can do well in the midterms.

All right. So they're using weasel math to make it look like they're not increasing the deficit, but every reasonable person thinks that they are. And I guess Tom Tillis is opposed to the Medicaid cuts as well. Yeah. And Laura Trump is seriously considering running for the North Carolina seat. I believe she's from North Carolina but doesn't live there presently. How much time do you need to go live somepla