Zeldin Targets EPA Overreach, Solid Second Quarter Growth, Buttigieg's Nonsensical Blathering
3 Martini Lunch
Radio America
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
First, they praise Zeldin for urging the courts to restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to what Congress has explicitly authorized. Jim notes that if Democrats want the EPA to expand its reach, they need to pass legislation, not rely on regulatory overreach. Greg applauds Zeldin for respecting the limits of government power and willingly ceding authority not grounded in law.
Next, Jim and Greg are thrilled to see the resilience of the economy as the second quarter GDP rose by three percent. Although not a fan of tariffs, Jim is pleasantly surprised to see the economy doing well. Meanwhile, the positive growth means we are nowhere near a recession, forcing Democrats to find different talking points.
Last, they slam Buttigieg for his substance-free response to The Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne tha God, who asked whether the future of the Democratic party is someone more like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani or someone like Buttigieg. Buttigieg's response included such rhetorical gems as "we're each going to be putting forward the version of the message that's truest to who we are" and what young Democrat politicians have in common is that "they are who they are." Jim and Greg have fun with Buttigieg's meaningless answers and consider what answers would have actually been interesting.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the three martini lunch. |
| 0:04.9 | Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. |
| 0:10.5 | Three martini's coming up. |
| 0:13.2 | Very thankful you're with us for the Wednesday edition of the three martini lunch and we've got two good martinis today. |
| 0:19.6 | Both of them related to the economy in some ways. One of them specifically related to environmental policy. Short version of the story, Lee Zeldon is the right guy at the EPA, certainly for one of them. And surprisingly good economic news on the second quarter, beating expert expectations. We'll get into the details of that. |
| 0:38.8 | And I know this will shock you, Jim, for the crazy martini. But Pete Buttigieg likes to say a lot of |
| 0:43.9 | words that don't really say a lot. So try to prepare yourself for this as we go through these |
| 0:50.1 | first couple martinis, okay? I'm kind of it. Let's get this good news out of the way, Greg. I can't wait to get the crazy. All right. All right. Well, as we noted, Lee Zeldon, of course, is the EPA administrator. He narrowly lost the New York governor's race in 2022, and I'm sure there's more than a few people in New York who are regretting not choosing him back in 2022. but he's doing a great job at EPA, finding all |
| 1:12.6 | sorts of places to cut. But one of the amazing things you'll ever see in government is someone |
| 1:17.5 | saying, please give me less power. That's exactly the type of person you want holding that power. |
| 1:25.1 | Well, here's Lee Zeldin. First of all, the tweet on X. The Trump EPA, he says, |
| 1:30.5 | is proposing the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States by repealing the |
| 1:36.0 | 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding, all the greenhouse gas regulations on vehicles that followed, |
| 1:43.2 | and the much-despised start-stop feature. |
| 1:46.4 | In doing so, we will follow Supreme Court precedent set |
| 1:49.0 | in cases like Loper Bright, West Virginia, and Michigan. |
| 1:52.5 | We will claim no statutory authority |
| 1:54.4 | beyond the plain language of the law, |
| 1:57.3 | and we will heed the calls of Americans demanding relief from extreme economic pain. |
| 2:02.9 | He also got into this in more detail on an interview on the Fox News channel. |
| 2:07.0 | There's going to be a lot of hyperbole scare tactics, extreme rhetoric that will come from climate |
| 2:12.9 | zealots. Here's the thing. The Supreme Court ruled in Loper Bright and overturned the Chevron doctrine, |
... |
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