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As always in Trump world, there’s a lot going on.
Between campaign events, Christmas parties, and speaking engagements, I’m running a little behind on my podcast schedule, but I wanted to sit down and unpack something that’s been bugging me all week: this idea that America “doesn’t have the talent” anymore.
Trump recently went on Laura Ingraham’s show and talked about H-1B–type visas, especially for more blue-collar, factory-related work. When pressed about bringing in foreign workers, he said America doesn’t have the “talent” here at home — especially for things like making missiles.
The media pounced. Some on the right did too.
But I think if you get past the soundbites, there’s a deeper, uncomfortable truth buried in what he was trying to say.
Did Trump Really Mean “America Has No Talent”?
Let’s start with the word talent.
When a business owner like me hears “talent,” we’re not thinking about American Idol or “America’s Got Talent.” We’re thinking about people who are qualified — trained, skilled, and able to do the job safely and correctly.
Could Trump have phrased it better? Absolutely. Saying “we don’t have enough skilled workers” would have been more accurate than “we don’t have the talent.” But if you look past the phrasing, he’s pointing at a real problem:
We do not have a large, ready-to-go pool of Americans who can walk into a missile factory tomorrow and start building advanced weapons systems.
You can’t just pull folks off the unemployment line and drop them onto a precision manufacturing floor. That’s not how any of this works.
So the real question is: why don’t we have that talent anymore?
That’s where the conversation actually needs to start.
How “College for Everyone” Hollowed Out America’s Skilled Workforce
I’m a product of the culture that said: “You’re going to college. Period.”
When I graduated high school, I told my parents I wanted to get a job. They told me, “No, you’re going to college.” I was still 17, so guess whose opinion won?
I went to a private Catholic high school. Almost everyone in my class went on to college. A few went into trades. A few went straight into the workforce. But the message was clear: college is the path, everything else is second-tier.
For decades, we’ve pushed this idea relentlessly. We’ve raised whole generations to believe that if you don’t go to college, you’ve somehow failed.
And here’s what we forgot to do along the way:
- Train electricians
- Train plumbers
- Train machinists
- Train welders
- Train people who can build houses, fix machines, and run advanced factory lines
My grandfather had an eighth-grade education. He could build a house, fix anything mechanical, and even repair my old turntable. That kind of practical, skilled, hands-on talent has been quietly disappearing — not because Americans are lazy or dumb, but because our entire culture has been telling young people that work like that is “less than.”
Now we’re shocked that we don’t have enough people who want to work in factories building highly technical systems. We engineered this problem.
Wages, Buc-ee’s, and Why Your Groceries Cost So Much
Now let’s talk about wages.
You’ve probably seen this: Amazon advertising starting wages around $23/hour with benefits. Buc-ee’s here in Texas paying $19–$20/hour for cashiers.
On its face, that sounds fantastic. I’m not against people making good money. But we need to be honest about what’s happening underneath.
Jobs like:
- Cashier
- Entry-level warehouse worker
- Basic service roles
…were never meant to be end-point career jobs that support a family of four and a mortgage. They were meant to be entry-level jobs — for students, for people starting out, for those in transition.
When we push starting wages that high for low-skill roles, it doesn’t just make people “more comfortable.” It also:
- Raises the cost of doing business
- Forces businesses with thin margins (like your local grocery store) to increase prices
- Fuels the very inflation we’re all complaining about
If Buc-ee’s pays $19 an hour for a cashier, the supermarket down the road has to compete. But a grocery store might only operate on a 2% profit margin. So where does that increased wage come from?
Your grocery bill.
We can’t pretend that wages happen in a vacuum. When every entry-level job gets pushed up, we create a cycle: higher wages → higher prices → higher cost of living → demand for even higher wages.
And meanwhile, the skilled machinist who spent years learning a trade is making not a whole lot more than someone scanning items at a register. That’s not just economically unsound — it’s unfair.
The Real Education Crisis: Not Outcomes, Just Attendance
Now, let’s turn to education.
We keep hearing about “more funding” for schools, but in many inner-city districts, the money is already there — and plenty of it. The problem is where it’s going.
Too often:
- Administrators are pulling down enormous salaries, sometimes living in million-dollar homes
- Student outcomes are flat or declining
- Kids are being pushed through the system just to move them along
Schools get paid because students show up, not because those students learn.
We’re not teaching:
- How to think
- How to learn
- How to remember
- How to behave, communicate, and function in the real world
We’re certainly not exposing kids to trades and real-world skills in any systematic way.
So we graduate students who:
- Can’t do basic math reliably
- Struggle with reading and comprehension
- Have no clear direction for their future
- Believe college is the only path, and then leave with massive debt and no marketable skills
And then we act shocked when we don’t have a talent pool for high-skill manufacturing, machining, or technical work.
This isn’t just an economic failure. It’s an education failure.
Congress, the Filibuster, and Why Nothing Ever Gets Fixed
Let’s zoom out to Washington for a moment.
We have another structural problem that quietly makes all of this worse: we don’t really make laws anymore. We rule by executive order.
Congress is supposed to:
- Draft legislation
- Debate it
- Pass it through the House and Senate
- Send it to the President for signature
Instead, we have decades of gridlock, with both parties using the filibuster as an excuse to do nothing while presidents of both parties rule by pen and executive order.
Here’s my view:
It’s time to nuke the filibuster.
Let Congress pass laws. Let us see where people actually stand. If Republicans control Congress and the presidency, pass the agenda you ran on. If Democrats take over later, they can pass theirs. That’s how representative government is supposed to work.
Executive orders are not a substitute for lawmaking. They’re a band-aid on a broken process.
Immigration, Dual Citizenship, and Assimilation
Now let me bring this back to a subject that’s personal to me: citizenship and immigration.
I was born in Italy. I was adopted and brought to the United States. My father chose for me to become an American citizen. I took my citizenship test at seven years old — the same one adults take. I stood there, raised my hand, and swore to uphold the Constitution.
To this day, I am also still, technically, an Italian citizen. Not because I chose dual citizenship as some clever legal hack, but because Italy doesn’t automatically cancel your citizenship when you naturalize elsewhere.
So when I hear people say, “End dual citizenship, make people choose or strip them of their American status,” I bristle. Not because I don’t understand the security concerns, but because real people with real histories get caught in the middle of that slogan.
I also have strong views on assimilation:
- If you come here, you should adopt American laws, norms, and values.
- You do not get to import Sharia law or recreate the exact political and cultural systems you fled.
- You don’t get to build “little Mogadishu” or “little Mecca” that rejects the Constitution while enjoying its protections.
I feel the same way about Dreamers. If you’ve been here since childhood, built your life here, and are now 30 or 40 years old, we need a sane, permanent solution — like long-term permanent residency without automatic voting rights.
We can be compassionate and serious about sovereignty at the same time.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
When Trump says we don’t have the “talent,” I don’t hear an insult to Americans. I hear an indictment of:
- A culture that devalued trades
- An education system that fails kids while enriching administrators
- An economy that distorts wages for low-skill work while starving high-skill trades
- A government that hides behind procedures like the filibuster instead of fixing laws
We’re not out of talent. We stopped developing it, respecting it, and rewarding it.
If we want a country that can build its own missiles, manufacture its own goods, and give its people a future beyond flipping burgers or waiting for the next government check, we have to:
- Restore respect for trades and technical work
- Fix our schools with a focus on outcomes, not bureaucracy
- Align wages with skills, responsibility, and productivity
- Reform immigration with common sense and loyalty to the Constitution
- Demand that Congress do its job and govern by law, not executive whim
That’s not anti-immigrant, anti-worker, or anti-progress. It’s pro–common sense, pro–middle class, and pro–American future.
And if you’ve read this far — don’t forget to share this post, and if you’re watching the video version, please like and subscribe. We’ve got a lot more to talk about.
